Thankfully, the Senate voted to ban lawsuits aimed at gun manufacturers by pretty much insurmountable odds for the imediate future. In fact, the final vote taly was 65 to 31 in favor of the ban. I have as yet not looked at a list of who voted both for and against it, but it's a safe bet no more than three or maybe four Republicans voted against the bill, while it's probably an equally safe bet that no more than ten to twelve democrats voted in favor of it. Hopefully, this is one dragon that has been put to rest.
But the Trial Lawyers Association and American Bar Association must have figured they had a good chance of sufferring this setback. After all, taking into consideraton the logistics involved, they must have known the odds were against them enjoying continued uninterrupted success. What it really amounts to is, Big Business is on to them, and for once, Big Business is in the right. The trial lawyers enjoyed such an unprecedented victory over the Tobacco Industry and it's Capitol Hill lobbyists, their greed got the better of them. Not content to rest on their laurels, they set out for more conquests, from juicier targets, for example, the Fast Food Industry, who saw them coming a mile away, and have been gradually implementing adjustments in their menus and their marketing strategies to try to ward them off at the pass.
At about the same time, they began aiming their sights at the gun manufacturers. But those boys play rough, and have some powerful buds, for example the NRA, arguably the most powerful and most effective lobbyng group in the history of Capitol Hill. They put their money where their mouths are, and now the critics of the gun industry, whle not necesarilly silenced, have cetainly been muzzled.
So now the Trial Lawyers Association will, after taking a little time to lick their wounds, eventually be able to go back to licking their chops as another target presents itself in the form of yet another group of real or imagined victims to exploit. They can gather them up in yet another insane class action lawsuit, and if they are successful, then once again they can divide up roughly one third of the winnings, if they feel like being generous, among their 2000 or so clients, while a relative small handful of lawyers and their staff divide up the bulk of the remaining two thirds.
And yet another business will then pass the increased costs of doing business, mainly due to increased insurance premiums, on to their consumers, and in the meantime more people will be laid off as another means of cutting expenses and making up their losses, and more laws will be passed, some of which may be good, some of which will be unnecessary. But life will go on. It's not really that great a tragedy, one way or another. But it's kind of funny just the same, just because it's all such an obvious fucking game, with the stakes, of course, greed, and power.
But it's nice to know that sometimes shit will blow up in the greedy bastards faces.
