If you love your country, you don’t arm the enemy

This week, a jury in Milwaukee decided that a gun shop was liable for more than $5 million in damages for improperly selling a gun. It’s the first jury verdict of its kind.

It was in May 2009 when Julius Burton walked into Badger Guns with a friend to buy a .40 caliber pistol.

A store video shows Burton pointing to the gun he wanted. But because he was only 18 years old, he was too young to buy it &#8212 legally. So he had his friend, Jacob Collins, fill out the federal paperwork. And his friend, like an idiot, told the truth!

“On the federal form, Jacob Collins had checked off, ‘no,’ the gun was not for him,” said Sarah Barwacz with CBS 58 in Milwaukee.

That should have killed the deal, but the clerk let him change his answer.

“The jury said, ‘You should have ended the sale right there,'” Barwacz reports.

Related: Government is more concerned with fantasy sports than gun control

But instead, the clerk sold the gun to Mr. Collins, who gave it to young Julius Burton, who ended up using it to shoot two police officers that had stopped him for riding a bike on a sidewalk. Collins pleaded guilty and went to jail. The officers went after the gun shop.

Barwacz talked to the jurors after the decision.

“They were essentially saying the store was negligent in not training its employees. One juror told me that it was the last line before a gun gets onto the street,” she said.

The jurors felt the gun store had a role in keeping the community secure and Barwacz found that many patriotic gun stores accept that responsibility.

“They feel that they have practices in place that would stop something like this. But many other gun stores around here seem a little bit angry about the topic and are not really willing to talk about it at all,” Barwacz said.

We’d have to call those the unpatriotic gun stores. Because if you love your country, you don’t arm the enemy.