Badger Guns Found Liable for Negligence in Milwaukee Police Shooting

Milwaukee Police Officer Bryan Norberg and former Officer Graham Kunisch were shot after they stopped Julius Burton for riding his bike on the sidewalk in the summer of 2009.

On Tuesday, jurors found that Badger Guns broke four laws when a clerk sold a gun that was used to shoot two Milwaukee police officers. The lawsuit brought by the two officers claimed that Badger Guns was negligent when it ignored warning signs the gun was being sold to a so-called straw buyer, someone who’s purchasing a gun for another individual.

A jury today ordered a Milwaukee gun store to pay almost $6 million to two city police officers who were shot in the face with a weapon bought at the shop.

Jurors issued the ruling Tuesday in a lawsuit against Badger Guns.

The national spotlight on gun shops has local gun sellers taking a second look at the way they do business.

The gun shop’s attorneys denied wrongdoing and said the owner, Adam Allan, couldn’t be held financially responsible for crimes connected to a weapon sold at his shop.

Surveillance video shows Burton with a friend at the Badger Gun store a month before the shooting. A bullet went through Norberg’s cheek and into his shoulder, shattering eight teeth.

According to CBS News, Kunisch lost an eye and had to have part of his brain removed. Authorities said Burton, a minor at the time, had paid Collins to illegally purchase the gun for him at Badger Guns in a deal called a straw purchase.

With their troubling businesses practices, the jury concluded, Badger Guns provided Burton with the opportunity to obtain a gun through the purchase by Collins. The gun that Mr. Burton used for the crime was purchased by a straw buyer – a person who buys a gun for another who can’t legally purchase one. Attorneys for the officers had argued that the gun shop should have recognized the sale as being suspicious. Badger Guns plans to appeal. “Where you have gun shops knowingly giving guns to criminals or aiding and abetting that, of course we should take action”, Sanders said, conceding to a change in opinion on gun shop owners’ liability in gun crimes.

The man who was convicted of shooting the officers is now serving an 80-year sentence.

But Jonathan E. Lowy, director of the legal action project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which has been a driving force in gun litigation, said the 2005 law had often derailed legitimate lawsuits, robbing victims of basic rights.