Capitol Hill[ (CNSNews.com) - A lawsuit filed against the maker of the gun allegedly used by the Washington, D.C., sniper suspects is being allowed to go forward based on "hypothetical facts" presented by lawyers for the anti-gun Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a Pierce County, Wash., court ruled Friday. A statement by the weapon's manufacturer said: "The Brady Center's attorneys are very loose with the facts."

Superior Court Judge Frank Cuthbertson determined that Bushmaster Firearms, Inc., of Windham, Maine, and Bull's Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma, Wash., may be held responsible for the criminal actions of others in the suit filed by the families of eight murder victims and one survivor.

Authorities have linked sniper suspects John Muhammad and Lee Malvo to 20 shootings in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., that killed 13 people last year. Prosecutors believe the three-week-long rampage was motivated, at least in part, by a plot to extort $10 million from the U.S. government.

Cuthbertson cited allegations currently under investigation against Bull's Eye in his decision to maintain the gun dealer as a defendant.

"The facts in the present case indicate that a high degree of risk of harm to plaintiffs was created by Bull's Eye Shooter Supply's allegedly reckless or incompetent conduct in distributing firearms," he wrote in an eight-page ruling.

Dozens of weapons were determined to be missing from Bull's Eye's 2000, 2001 and 2002 inventories in audits conducted by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF). The lawsuit claims at least 238 guns were unaccounted for, a rate of loss almost 100 percent higher (99.7) than all other licensed firearms dealers nationwide.

Industry sources told CNSNews.com that many of the weapons initially thought to be lost or stolen were actually miscataloged in Bull's Eye's inventory and later found. The Bushmaster XM-15 E2S .223-caliber semi-automatic (one shot fired per trigger pull) rifle allegedly used by Muhammad and Malvo was among the guns actually missing from Bull's Eye's inventory.

Federal law requires the holder of a Federal Firearms License (FFL) to report any lost, missing or stolen gun to the BATF with 48 hours of the discovery. The Brady Center's lawsuit alleges that Bull's Eye did not report some of the guns missing for as long as a year after the dealer discovered the inventory shortages.

Debbie Lewis, a spokeswoman for the BATF, told CNSNews.com that the agency could not release any information regarding the weapons alleged to be missing from Bull's Eye Shooter Supply.

"Because it's an ongoing investigation, we really can't comment on it," she explained.

Judge bases decision on Brady Center's 'hypothetical facts'

Cuthbertson appears to have relied predominantly on claims made by the anti-gun group sponsoring the lawsuit in his decision not to dismiss the manufacturer of the rifle as a defendant.

"In the present case, assuming the facts and hypothetical facts presented by plaintiffs as true," he wrote [emphasis added], "Bushmaster Firearms, Inc., knew or should have known that Bull's Eye Shooter Supply was operating its store in a reckless or incompetent manner, creating an unreasonable risk of harm."

Lawsuit claims suspects could not get guns without alleged 'negligence'

The legal arm of the gun ban group formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc. - now known as the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence - acknowledged in a press release on Monday that the so-called "victims' lawsuit" is actually being prosecuted "by attorneys from the Brady Center's Legal Action Project and the Seattle law firm of Luvera, Barnett, Brindley, Beninger & Cunningham."

The group argues that both Bull's Eye and Bushmaster are guilty of "supplying guns to criminals."

"Because both sniper suspects were legally prohibited from buying guns, they could not have obtained the gun without the gun shop's negligence," the Brady Center press release claimed. "Bushmaster Firearms is charged with negligence in continuing to sell ... through Bull's Eye even though government audits of the store had revealed hundreds of 'missing' guns."

Representatives of Bushmaster were unavailable Monday due to a deluge of media requests for comment on the decision, but the company had issued a statement regarding the accusations when the lawsuit was filed.

"The Brady Center's attorneys are very loose with the facts in an attempt to conform them to their anti-gun theories," the Bushmaster statement said. "For example, they state we would know the results of BATF's audits, knowing full well that we would not have access to that information."

As BATF's Lewis stated, any information regarding an ongoing investigation is considered confidential, including the results of inventory audits.

Bushmaster also argued that it is clearly wrong for the Brady Center to accuse the gun maker of "supplying guns to criminals."

"We sold the rifle legally to a firearms dealer licensed by the federal government, from whom it was allegedly stolen," Bushmaster asserted. "Very disturbed people acquired it illegally, then used it in a heinous crime."

The manufacturer of sport, target shooting and hunting rifles for civilians and assault rifles for the military and law enforcement market noted the BATF requires only that gun makers have on file a signed FFL for each dealer with whom they do business.

"But we go an extra step and also re-verify the dealer's FFL with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms prior to every shipment to ensure that it is still current and valid," Bushmaster concluded.

Even federal law enforcement agencies cannot control gun inventory

Erich Pratt, spokesman for Gun Owners of America, called the Brady Center's allegations against Bushmaster "outrageous."

"For them to say that Malvo and Muhammad couldn't have gotten firearms any other way than through the dealer's negligence is just simply asinine," he said.

Pratt agreed that neither of the men could have legally purchased the rifle. Malvo is ineligible as a juvenile, and Muhammad was under a domestic violence protective order when the weapon allegedly came to be in their possession.

But Pratt pointed out that, although authorities have not officially discussed how the pair allegedly came to be in possession of the gun used in the shootings, published reports support Bushmaster's contention that the rifle was stolen after it was legally sold to Bull's Eye.

"No official explanation has been given for how the .223-caliber XM-15 rifle got out of Bull's Eye," the Seattle Times reported Saturday, "but Malvo has told investigators he shoplifted the 35-inch-long rifle from the store last summer, law-enforcement sources have said."

Pratt also noted the release Monday of a General Accounting Office (GAO) report, which details that - of 1,012 federal law enforcement officers' firearms that were reported lost, stolen or otherwise unaccounted for between Sep. 1998 and July 2002 - 824 are still missing.

"In just one example, of the 458 guns the FBI couldn't account for during that time, 386 are still missing," Pratt observed. "That's more than Bull's Eye Shooter Supply is accused of losing in the 'Brady Bunch's' lawsuit. Interesting, isn't it?"

The GAO report also noted that of the 16 firearms originally reported lost, stolen or otherwise unaccounted for by the BATF, only seven had been recovered at the conclusion of the GAO investigation.

[url=http://www.doug4justice.org/Shielding/Cuthbertson/Tribune011025.html]Judge's 22-year-old arrest surfaces in Pierce race[/url]
...accusing [red]Cuthbertson[/red] of not revealing a 22-year-old conviction linked to a fatal shootout between communists and the Ku Klux Klan.

Specifically, Tollefson has tried to connect the then-25-year-old Cuthbertson to a 1979 gun battle between communists and white supremacists in Greensboro, N.C. Five communist activists were killed in the shootout, which has become known as the Greensboro Massacre.

[red]Cuthbertson acknowledges he was charged with a weapons violation the week after the gun battle when he drove to Greensboro for the funerals of the slain [i]activists[/i] [should read "Communists"!!][/red].

He says he was a community organizer and knew the five [dead Commies] through Duke University and his anti-apartheid activism.

"The bottom line is," Cuthbertson said, "[red]I'm not ashamed of knowing those people [the dead Commies][/red]. I'm not ashamed of opposing the Klan. I'm not ashamed that I went to the funeral."

[url=http://charlestonvoice.netfirms.com/RedTide.htm]Red Tide Rising in the Carolinas
[/url]

[red]Communist Workers Party members and supporters arrested for possession of weapons and other charges[/red] included a group of fifteen persons from Philadelphia who had traveled as part of a 25-car caravan for the ''Death to the Klan" march. These included Jody Ansell , Daniel Bartoletti, Christine Chin, Howard Chin, Steve Clark, Joseph E. Cook, Jr., Robert Dohey. David W. Fay, Carl Foushee, Lawrence Goode, Fred Gumminger, Phyllis Jones, Jerome Ludder, Hollis McCoy and Olphiand Ortega.

[red]A second group of [size=3]CWP activists[/size=3] had traveled to Greensboro from Durham. Those from the Durham group arrested included Leonard Briggs, Thomas Clark, [size=3]Frank Cuthbertson[/size=3][/red], Francis Davis, Charles Finch, Gershon Gell, Christopher Lewis and Gregory Plante.