The Daily Beast
On April 13th, 2011, Jitka Vesel was walking to her car when she saw a man she knew running toward her, shooting at her with a handgun.
Vesel threw coffee at her attacker
and began to run away, but he pursued her and shot her in the back and
in the back of the head, killing her and leaving her corpse so
disfigured that local police would not allow Vesel’s family to see her
body. Vesel was killed by Demetry Smirnov, a man she had met on the
Internet and who had stalked her for years after she allegedly ended
their brief romantic relationship.
Smirnov bought the .40-caliber handgun he used to kill Vesel via Armslist,
an online firearms marketplace that has tens of thousands of guns
listed, with no fees, no auctions—and no enforced background checks for
buyers.
On Wednesday, Vesel’s family and the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, a prominent gun-control advocacy group, filed a lawsuit (PDF)
against Armslist for negligence in allowing Smirnov to purchase his
weapon. The suit claims Smirnov bought the gun illegally: private
sellers are restricted to selling guns in-state only; Smirnov was an
immigrant from Russia living in Canada when he bought the gun.
The Brady Campaign,
represented by Jonathan Lowy, director of the campaign’s Legal Action
Project, says this is the first lawsuit against an online gun site for
causing a shooting.
Gun control advocates
say potentially taking down Armslist is a crucial piece of the complex
task of narrowing what they say is a massive loophole that allows
criminals to buy guns from private sellers without being
background-checked.
While
all licensed dealers are required to subject their sellers to a
background check, the same rule does not apply to unlicensed, private
dealers, many of whom use sites like Armslist, Gun Listings, and Glock Talk to sell weapons.
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