A woman who was shot in Brooklyn subway shooting in April and left 10 people wounded, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Glock Inc. and its parent company, accusing them of causing a public nuisance in New York and harming public health and safety.
Ilene Steur, the woman behind the federal lawsuit filed in the Eastern District of New York, was on her way to work when she was shot by a gunman in the April 12 attack.
The shooting suspect, Frank James, is alleged to have used a 9 mm Glock handgun in the shooting. He pleaded not guilty last month to terrorism and weapons charges.
In the suit, Steur, 49, and her lawyers accuse Glock of marketing its products in ways that emphasize firearm characteristics, such as their high capacity and ease of concealment, that appeal to prospective purchasers with criminal intent. The lawsuit accuses Glock of purposely supplying more firearms than the legitimate market can bear in order to induce sales in the secondary market, while failing to train dealers to avoid illegal transactions and refusing to shut down contracts with distributors who have sold to dealers with disproportionate amounts of guns traced to crime scenes. It states that Glock has endangered the health and safety of New York residents by marketing, distributing, promoting and selling firearms with reckless disregard for human life and for the peace, tranquility and economic well-being of the public. The lawsuit comes amid growing calls for gun control in the U.S. in the wake of the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas last week, which left 19 children dead and two teachers killed.
It comes on the heels of a deadly Memorial Day weekend that left at least 9 dead and more than 60 injured in mass shootings, according to the Gun Violence Archive. The organization defines mass shooting as a shooting in which four or more victims were shot or killed, not including the suspect.
President Joe Biden has pushed for tougher gun control measures, including a ban on assault weapons. He told reporters outside the White House that the Constitution, the Second Amendment, and the Constitution were never absolute. When the Second Amendment was passed, you couldn't buy a cannon. You can't buy a lot of weaponry if you went out and bought a lot of it.