Tree of Life Synagogue
A man places flowers outside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, Oct. 27, 2020, the second anniversary of the shooting at the synagogue, that killed 11 worshippers. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
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Ambulance-chasing attorneys have long sought to monetize horrific crimes by suing gun manufacturers. Federal law has nearly put that to an end with the passage of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms, though lawyers and gun control advocates are constantly in search of novel approaches to skirting PLCAA protections.

Now, we have a new tactic by a desperate juris doctor in New York: sue the National Rifle Association on behalf of the son of a pair of the victims at the Tree of Life Synagogue shooting. Why in the world would the NRA have any culpability in this case? That’s a good question in a normal world.

From TribLive:

A man whose parents were killed in the 2018 Tree of Life synagogue massacre has sued the National Rifle Association, claiming the gun lobby radicalized accused shooter Robert Bowers with “white supremacist conspiracy theories.”

Marc Simon, the son of Bernice and Sylvan Simon, filed the lawsuit Thursday. It names as defendants the NRA, the gun maker Colt’s Manufacturing, indicted shooter [scumbag’s name redacted] and the unnamed company that sold [scumbag’s name redacted] the AR-15 used in the attack.

Eleven worshippers were killed in the Oct. 27, 2018, attack in Squirrel Hill.

[Scumbag’s name redacted] was not born fearing and hating Jews,” attorneys wrote in the lawsuit. “The gun lobby taught him to do that.”

The gun lobby taught him to hate Jews? To murder innocent people in a house of worship?

As a Life Member of the NRA and a veteran of many of the association’s annual meetings and conventions, I can say with absolute certainty that neither the plaintiff or the attorney in this case has ever attended any of the NRA events I have.

The NRA has many flaws, but it doesn’t preach hate, racism, or violence. Instead, it advocates responsible gun ownership and conflict avoidance in addition to protecting and defending Americans’ right to keep and bear arms. The NRA actively defends the rights of law-abiding Americans to protect and defend their families.

The NRA is not hesitant to show why ignoring the proven benefits of firearm ownership can lead to tragic results…results like what happened at the Tree of Life synagogue.

In fact, the synagogue’s leader, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, has been an advocate for gun control. And the day the wolf came to call, Rabbi Myers’ flock remained exposed and vulnerable to a madman with evil in his heart.

From Jewish News:

Rabbi Jeffrey Myers, spiritual leader of the Tree of Life Synagogue, where the horrific shooting took place Saturday in the Squirrel Hill neighborhood of Pittsburgh, railed against political leaders for not legislating stronger gun control laws.

In a blog on the synagogue’s website dated July 19, Rabbi Myers wrote, “Despite continuous calls for sensible gun control and mental health care, our elected leaders in Washington knew that it [calls for gun control in the wake of the Parkland school shooting] would fade away in time.”

‘’Unless there is a dramatic turnaround in the mid-term elections, I fear that the status quo will remain unchanged, and school shootings will resume,” he said.

Meanwhile, a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter did some digging into the killer’s background. He mentioned some fringe talk-radio hosts, but failed to find that the NRA had any role whatsoever in the killer’s alleged radicalization.

The attorney in this case is hoping for a big payout and loads of free publicity from filing this lawsuit. He’s likely to get it, too, from the compliant, gun rights-averse media. Whether or not the lawsuit has any merit will fall to the courts to decide. In all likelihood, it will die a quiet death as a dismissal won’t do anything to further the mainstream media’s guns-are-bad narrative.

The bottom line: the only thing that stops evil, deranged men from committing horrific acts is a good guy with a gun. In this instance, it took precious minutes for those good men with guns — the police — to show up and stop the killer’s rampage. In the meantime 11 people were killed and others wounded.

How might have this story played out if, in another world, Rabbi Myers embraced the right to keep and bear arms in self-defense? If the Tree of Life wasn’t a “gun-free” zone? How many of those killed might have survived if only one member of the congregation had been armed that day as someone was at a similar synagogue attack in San Diego?

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59 COMMENTS

  1. Hatred of Jews has existed for roughly oh, since Abraham. Your observation about the Rabbi will fall on deaf ears.

    • I’ve spent many a month in Israel. I always use this example. In america if someone walks into a Starbucks who’s not a cop and has a gun on his hip the customers run out screaming. In Israel if someone walks into a cafe who’s and doesn’t have a gun on his hip the customers run out screaming.

    • That won’t happen. Sounds like a suit a young underemployed lawyer, desperate for trial experience would file.

      • You would think hitting his head on the ambulance’s rear bumper would knock some sense into the lawyer.

        • When I was in law school, we had to take a mandatory class to help students pass the California bar. The teacher’s first question to the class was “How many of you know a dumb lawyer?” When about half the class raised their hands, he said, “See, just goes to show you it doesn’t take brains to pass the California bar.” (At the time, California was generally recognized as having the second toughest exam in the country, behind New York. The state wide pass rate got so low a few years back that they have been dumbing it down.)

        • I can’t vouch for how difficult the California Bar exam is but the fact that California is the Mecca of the unaccredited law school almost certainly plays a part in that state’s low pass rate. A lot of people taking that state’s exam would likely not even be taking the exam at all in other states.

      • Is the NRA engaged in “lawful commerce in arms “? Does training count? Colt will of course be able yo collect legal fees as will the gun store.

    • AGREED!
      The NRA is the first and oldest civil rights organization in this country.
      On DAY ONE, it mattered NOT if you were Christian or Jew, Black or white, male or female.
      It just shows you idiot money-grabbing lawyers are everywhere.

    • It might be easier for them to show you if you posted a picture of the owwy doll, you know the one I am talking about, the one with the feelings.

  2. Never ceases to amaze me how Jews largely are anti-gun, pro-gun control after the Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. Learn from history or be doomed to repeat it. Sadly, Tree of Life Snagogue and Rabbi Myers didn’t learn; they repeated it. Just like blacks continually voting Democrat…….predominantly the party of Southern cotton plantation slavery; Jim Crowe Laws (gun control for blacks); The KKK, poll taxes, Segregation, and the updated plantation paradigm….The Government Plantation.
    Shaking head; rolling eyes!!!! Can’t cure stupid, I guess.

    • The NRA needs to file a slander and libel counter-suit. All of this racism has a source and that source is the democRat Party. The democRat Party will try to excuse themselves by saying all the racists moved to the Party of Lincoln in the sixties. Any proof of this phenomenon by mass voter registration changes or film of this mass racist migration?. Nothing NADA. Just democRats trying to whitewash their long despicable racist history. A history that included the democRat Party in the north, east and west and not just the south as history rewrites also want people to believe.

      From the N word to the back of the bus the democRat Party educated America’s youth for years with the kind of hate noted in the lawsuit and that same hate still runs deep today in some people. So apologize to the NRA for a frivolous lawsuit and sue the democRat Party for they are the owners of hate and make it democRat vs democRat.

      • Can’t sue for slander. Lawsuit pleadings (with some limitations not relevant here) are absolutely privileged. (Statements outside of court are not, however.) If it wins, it could potentially sue for malicious prosecution, but the bar is so high it may not be worth it.

    • And considering how pogroms and restrictions they’ve had to endure over the last two millennia. Many still happening in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

  3. I was once an NRA member, and will probably be again one day anno LaPierre. I do not recall ever seeing any “white supremacist” articles or advertising in any of their materials, and I would be shocked if anything like that came out of Wayne’s mouth. Whether or not this “attorney” can state a claim that survives a motion to dismiss, his case will perish from lack of evidence. I wonder how he tried to plead around the PLCCA with respect to Colt, though I were to guess, he probably is going to try the same stunt that the lawyers suing Remington did in Connecticut, i.e., negligent advertising.

    • Anyone can be sued for any reason, any time, any where. No facts are required. Anything no matter how crazy can be alleged. And when its over the false allegation goes unpunished.

  4. “white supremacist conspiracy theories.”

    Four buzzwords in a row. Gosh, I wonder what’s going on here?

    • Do you still believe the Leftists will ever put a foot down and say “Enough is enough, already”, so this shit can end?

  5. If the NRA is radicalizing people, who else has their “teaching” taken hold in? Since the gun lobby is so far-reaching, how many millions of people have they failed to reach? This is “Black Sabbath turned my child into a devil-worshiping murderer” on a much wider scale.

    • I caught my scary guns listening to Black Sabbath one day, had to lock them all in a safe because I was afraid they would start killing people.

    • The only people NRA seems to have “radicalized” are the short-sighted, belligerent, uninformed NRA haters in the so-called gun movement themselves. Especially those who’ve never been NRA members nor done anything constructive to try to change it if anything really needs changing. Talk about unreasonable, slander, misrepresentation, ignorance…

  6. “claiming the gun lobby radicalized accused shooter Robert Bowers with “white supremacist conspiracy theories.”

    Good luck proving that in court and I guess the attorneys are not aware that what Wayne hasn’t squandered on suits, cigars and wining and dining his mistress and the wifes spa sessions,the NRA is filed bankruptcy.

  7. How much ya wanna bet that this “plaintiff” was approached by one of Bloomturd’s Mommies! Demanding! Action! and incentivized to file this suit NOW, of all times?

    There is NO such thing as coincidence, especially in politics.

  8. Hell, the biggest Jew-hating organization in the world is academia followed closely by the Democrat party.

    Both of those places have a lot more money than the NRA.

    The Leftist college campus is a cesspool of Palestinian lovin soy-boys and gurlz.

  9. This right here is WHY in frivolous lawsuits that the loser should pay at lest half of the damages they were seeking and 100% court costs of the other side and reimburse the state….the lawyer too!

  10. This would be an interesting precedent. I suppose we would be able to sue criminals’ parents even if they took no part in parenting. I mean, that’s part of the problem isn’t it? Pay up.

    • No. The civil case is automatically stayed, but not automatically dismissed. Unless the bankruptcy court dismisses the bankruptcy petition–which is a distinct possibility–the plaintiffs will have to file a claim in the bankruptcy court. At some point, their case will have to be tried to attempt to establish liability and damages, but in the usual case a personal injury plaintiff will seek relief from the stay on a promise to only go after insurance proceeds, if any. Assuming there is general liability insurance that applies to the claim, the carrier would prefer to settle, as the costs of defense likely exceed the potential recovery, but I suspect plaitniffs would rather make a statement than settle. (But I speculate.)

  11. Perhaps Rabbi Myers should have read the literature of JPFO, -> or better yet, Joined ! Obviously the son suing the NRA knows nothing about the organization and is listening to the likes MSNBC and other clowns of disinformation. Or Worse – that attorney.

  12. In this particular case he got the “white supremacist conspiracy theory” part right, he’s just confused about who’s saying them.

    If there were anti antisemitism in an organization right of Mao don’t you think they’d have plastered it on CNN for months on end by now? Especially the NRA? The only way Anti antisemitism gets ignored is if it’s done by Democrats like Illhan Omar at which point the resolution gets watered down to “anti racism” or something equally vague and meaningless.

  13. The NRA is ‘exactly’ the organization this country needs so very badly right now if…

    1) it were not for their self-imploding leadership
    2) it were not for the board allowing such non-sense
    3) it were not for being seen as domestic terrorists (which is a twisted view of reality that obscures truth)
    4) it were not for such a large portion of the population having no idea what the NRA actually is outside of what the left tells them

    The American population needs training. So do cops. No one on earth is better equipped to do that then the NRA. It would be such a shame to lose them.

  14. The NRA actively defends the rights of law-abiding Americans to protect and defend their families.

    Citations needed.

    The NRA frequently claims that. I have yet to see evidence that they are actually doing that (in any significant effective fashion) in the last five to ten years.

  15. Guess the kid didn’t get the memo… The NRA filed for bankruptcy in NY… Anyway as a long time life member of the NRA I have received thousands of pieces of literature, mostly requests for donations or upgrading and I can say this about that as an expert on the subject.. I have NEVER received a form, letter, voters sheet or magazine in over 40 years that even hinted at anti-Semitism or racism in ANY form… I say the kid needs to get a second opinion and probably a job, he’s not going to get rich from this one… Who processed the plastic that was used to make the stock for shitbags gun, maybe they should be included…

  16. Another example of the need for Tort Reform in America!

    Frivolous lawsuits will continue until the laws are revised to cover all industries, and cut the lawyers out. No more % of settlement. Only normal hourly wage paid. Also, the lawyer needs some skin in the game, if lawsuit determined frivolous at trial, they need to pay defendant.

    We need to stop the ambulance chasers and political hacks.

  17. To the best of my knowledge, Brower’s wasn’t and has never been a member of the NRA. In light of that fact, alleging the NRA influenced Brower’ isn’t a claim that stands up to reasonable scrutiny. There’s no evidence to support the spurious claim.
    A reasonable and logical Court would/should dismiss the allegations simply because of that fact. Will the Court show reason and logic? I seriously doubt it will.

  18. “…Rabbi Myers wrote, “Despite continuous calls for sensible gun control…” There’s that deceptive adjective again, “sensible.” Clearly, the good Rabbi isn’t a member of (or likely even familiar with) Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO).

    http://jpfo.org/

    • Sensible Control…Be very careful about Who Defines Sensible…The Nazi’s and other Nations believed in “Sensible Jew Control”. Because they believed all their problems would be solved by Eliminating a perceived problem. Millions died because of a perceived problem with a Sensible answer. “The urge to save Humanity is almost always a false face for the urge to Rule It.

      • It often does seem like the proverbial ‘road to hell’ is paved with good (i.e., ‘progressive’) intentions.

  19. In my view, the complaining party suffers from one of two, possibly from both of the following. Loose emotional screws or overly torqued screws. There might well be some dirt bag lawyers involved, but the complaining party has to sign on to the action at some point, right?

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