Public Nuisance Claims Against Gun Sellers: New Insights and Challenges

Gun violence continues unabated. Regulation of these deadly instruments is woefully inadequate, and legislatures are compounding the problem by barring or restricting access to the courts for the death and injuries that guns cause. In short, Congress and state legislators have repeatedly acquiesced to the demands of the gun lobby. During the past several years, cities have struck back by filing public nuisance claims against those gun sellers whose practices pose a risk to the public\u27s health and safety. After a slow start, public nuisance claims have recently gained traction in state appellate courts, which are increasingly coming to realize and respect the core mission of public nuisance law. Such claims differ in essential ways from private claims as they do not seek to recover for injuries caused by guns, but rather allow municipalities to protect their citizens from the gun violence. Indeed, such nuisance abatement is a central component of the state\u27s police power, which requires states and their political divisions to protect public health, safety, and welfare. Several public nuisance claims seeking to compel gun makers and sellers to refrain from practices that increase the already high risk of death or injury from their products have been permitted to survive the pleading stage. This is a salutary development and reflects better judicial understanding of the difference between nuisance law and tort law. This Article lauds these developments while undertaking a critical assessment of recent cases. Part I provides an overview of public nuisance law and discusses some important differences between claims brought by public entities and those brought by private citizens. Part II goes into detail regarding the nature of the public nuisance caused by the conduct of gun sellers. In Part III, the Authors examine some of the recent decisions in which public nuisance claims against these gun dealers have been allowed to survive a motion to dismiss, a previously insuperable hurdle, while in Part IV they analyze the significance of these small victories for the future of similar litigation. Finally in Part V, the Authors describe legislative efforts to shield gun makers from these lawsuits and note flaws in the purported justifications for such legislation

Measuring driving styles: A validation of the multidimensional driving style inventory,"

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to validate the stability of the different factors of the Multidimensional Driving Style Inventory (MDSI

Novel Insights into the Bovine Polled Phenotype and Horn Ontogenesis in Bovidae

Despite massive research efforts, the molecular etiology of bovine polledness and the developmental pathways involved in horn ontogenesis are still poorly understood. In a recent article, we provided evidence for the existence of at least two different alleles at the Polled locus and identified candidate mutations for each of them. None of these mutations was located in known coding or regulatory regions, thus adding to the complexity of understanding the molecular basis of polledness. We confirm previous results here and exhaustively identify the causative mutation for the Celtic allele (PC) and four candidate mutations for the Friesian allele (PF). We describe a previously unreported eyelash-and-eyelid phenotype associated with regular polledness, and present unique histological and gene expression data on bovine horn bud differentiation in fetuses affected by three different horn defect syndromes, as well as in wild-type controls. We propose the ectopic expression of a lincRNA in PC/p horn buds as a probable cause of horn bud agenesis. In addition, we provide evidence for an involvement of OLIG2, FOXL2 and RXFP2 in horn bud differentiation, and draw a first link between bovine, ovine and caprine Polled loci. Our results represent a first and important step in understanding the genetic pathways and key process involved in horn bud differentiation in Bovidae

Kinematics of globular cluster systems and the formation of early-type galaxies

We numerically investigate the kinematic properties of globular cluster systems (GCSs) in E/S0 galaxies formed from dissipationless merging of spiral galaxies. The metal-poor globular clusters (MPCs) and metal-rich clusters (MRCs) in the merger progenitors are initially assumed to have spatial distributions consistent with the Milky Way GC system. Our principal results, which can be tested against observations, are as follows. Both MPCs and MRCs in elliptical galaxies formed from major mergers can exhibit significant rotation at large radii ($\sim$20 kpc) due to the conversion of initial orbital angular momentum into intrinsic angular momentum of the remnant. MPCs show higher central velocity dispersions than MRCs for most major merger models. $V_{\rm m}/{\sigma}_{0}$ (where $V_{\rm m}$ and ${\sigma}_{0}$, are the GCS maximum rotational velocity and central velocity dispersion of respectively) ranges from 0.2--1.0 and 0.1--0.9 for the MPCs and MRCs respectively, within $6R_{\rm e}$ for the remnant elliptical. For most merger remnant ellipticals, $V_{\rm m}/{\sigma}_{0}$ of GCSs within $6R_{\rm e}$ is greater than that of the field stars within $2R_{\rm e}$. The radial profiles of rotational velocities and velocity dispersions of the GCSs depend upon the orbital configuration of the merger progenitors, their mass-ratios, and the viewing angle. For example, more flattened early-type galaxies, formed through mergers with small mass ratios ($\sim$ 0.1), show little rotation in the outer MRCs. Two-dimensional (2D) velocity dispersion distributions of the GCSs of merger remnant ellipticals are generally flattened for both MPCs and MRCs, reflecting the fact that the GCSs have anisotropic velocity dispersions (abridged).Comment: 14 pages, 16 figures, accepted by MNRA