December, 12 2012, 12:16pm EDT
Internet Gun Site Sued By Brady on Behalf of Woman Killed with Gun Sold Through "Internet Loophole"
CHICAGO
The Brady Center announced at a news conference today in Chicago that it has filed a lawsuit for wrongful death in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois against Armslist.com, an Internet gun web site, on behalf of the family of Jitka Vesel, who was murdered by a stalker. The complaint alleges that Jitka was killed with a gun sold illegally in an online sale facilitated by the web site. This is the first lawsuit against a gun website for causing a shooting.
"Responsible gun sellers and web site operators, like most Americans, recognize that guns should be sold with the greatest care, to prevent arming dangerous people with the means to kill," said the Brady Center's Legal Action Project Director, Jonathan Lowy, counsel for the family. "Gun sellers and web site operators who facilitate the arming of killers and criminals must be held accountable. We as a nation are better than an anonymous Internet gun market where killers and criminals can easily get guns."
According to the complaint filed today, on April 13, 2011, Jitka Vesel, a 36-year-old immigrant from the Czech Republic was shot and killed by Demetry Smirnov, a Russian immigrant residing in Canada who had met Jitka online a few years earlier. Smirnov stalked her at night to a parking lot where he shot her 11-12 times with a .40-caliber handgun. The complaint alleges that he illegally purchased the gun from a private seller whom he located through armslist.com, an online gun auction site owned by defendant Armslist, LLC. The complaint alleges that the website's design encourages and enables users to evade laws that allow private sellers to sell firearms only to residents of their own state by enticing prospective buyers to search for and find gun sellers throughout all 50 states.
Sales conducted over the Internet frequently have been linked to illegal gun trafficking and sales to minors, and have been connected to the mass shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern Illinois University. According to media reports, Armslist.com also facilitated the sale of the gun used in a recent multiple shooting at a Wisconsin spa in October 2012. In 1999, due to the proliferation of illegal online gun sales, eBay announced it was prohibiting online gun sales. In or around 2007, Craigslist followed suit, banning firearm sales from its site. Other online websites that allow private parties to post goods for sale, including Amazon.com and Google AdWords, also prohibit the listing of firearms for sale because of the high likelihood that such gun sales will funnel guns to the criminal market.
A recent undercover investigation by the City of New York of online firearm sellers found that 62% of private gun sellers agreed to sell a firearm to a buyer who said that he probably could not pass a background check. The City reported that in the undercover sting, more than half of the gun sellers contacted who were listed by Armslist agreed to sell a gun to someone who said he could not pass a background check, in violation of federal law.
Jitka was killed in the parking lot of the Chicago-area Czechoslovak Heritage Museum where she had been working as a volunteer to prepare for a celebration in honor of former Czech-American Chicago Mayor Anton Cermak. Ironically, Mayor Cermak was assassinated with a handgun in 1933 while shaking hands with President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was the intended target of the assassin. The shooting helped lead to the first major federal gun legislation.
Smirnov is currently serving a life sentence without parole. The gun seller pled guilty to the illegal transfer of a firearm to an out-of-state person, a felony, and was sentenced to one year and a day in prison. Jitka leaves behind her brother and life-long best-friend, plaintiff Alex Vesely, another brother, Pavel Vesely, and her father, Antonin Vesely
Jay Dobrutsky and Alex Marks of the Chicago law firm of Burke, Warren, MacKay & Serritella, P.C. are serving as co-counsel with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in the case.
Brady United formerly known as The Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence and its legislative and grassroots affiliate, the Brady Campaign and its dedicated network of Million Mom March Chapters, is the nation's largest, non-partisan, grassroots organization leading the fight to prevent gun violence. We are devoted to creating an America free from gun violence, where all Americans are safe at home, at school, at work, and in our communities.
LATEST NEWS
After Trump Vow to Intervene, Kushner Linked to Paramount's Hostile Bid for Warner Bros.
"The correct option is neither Paramount nor Netflix buy Warner," said one antitrust advocate.
Dec 08, 2025
Paramount Skydance on Monday launched a hostile bid to take over Warner Bros. Discovery shortly after US President Donald Trump publicly expressed skepticism of Netflix's proposed deal to acquire parts of the media company—and pledged to intervene in the federal review process.
"It is a big market share, there’s no question about it," Trump said late Sunday of Netflix's proposed $83 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery's (WBD) film studio and streaming business.
"I’ll be involved in that decision," the president added.
Hours after Trump's comments, Paramount CEO David Ellison—the son of billionaire GOP megadonor and close Trump ally Larry Ellison—announced the hostile bid to buy WBD, attempting to subvert the Netflix deal by taking an all-cash, $30-per-share offer directly to Warner Bros. shareholders.
Observers expressed alarm over the seeming coordination between the president and Paramount's chief executive as the fight over Warner Bros. escalates. Trump reportedly favored Paramount to win the bidding war for WBD, which owns CNN, HBO Max, and other major assets.
Axios reported Monday that "Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Jared Kushner, is part of Paramount's hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros Discovery, according to a regulatory filing."
"Affinity Partners was not mentioned in Paramount's press release on Monday morning about its $108 billion bid," Axios noted, "nor were participating sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi, and Qatar."
Ellison was reportedly at the White House last week urging the Trump administration to block Netflix's bid for WBD.
Speaking to CNBC on Monday, Ellison said that "we've had great conversations with the president about" Paramount—which controls CBS News thanks to a merger that the Trump administration approved—potentially becoming the owner of CNN, a frequent target of Trump's vitriol.
CNBC: Do you think the president embraces the idea of you being the owner of CNN given his criticism for that network?
DAVID ELLISON: Ah -- we've had great conversations with the president about this but I don't want to speak for him in any way, shape, or form pic.twitter.com/FdwBzfP3eO
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 8, 2025
Nidhi Hegde, executive director of the American Economic Liberties Project, said in response to Ellison's remarks that "the correct option is neither Paramount nor Netflix buy Warner."
"The president inserting himself in the deal is obviously problematic, regardless of the parties involved," said Hegde. "If Netflix’s Ted Sarandos, who Trump called a great person, finds a way to appease him, that is also not good!"
US Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) expressed similar concerns about Trump's potential corruption of the regulatory process. The proposed Netflix deal is expected to face a review by the US Justice Department's Antitrust Division, where top officials were recently ousted for "insubordination" amid criticism of agency leaders' corporate-friendly approach to merger enforcement.
"Is that an open invite for CEOs to curry favor with Trump in exchange for merger approvals?" Warren asked after Trump pledged to insert himself into the Netflix-WBD review process.
"It should be an independent decision by the Department of Justice based on the law and facts," added Warren, who called the Netflix-WBD deal "an anti-monopoly nightmare."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Top Brazilian Official Warns Trump of 'Vietnam-Style' Regional Conflict If He Attacks Venezuela
"The last thing we want is for South America to become a war zone," said Celso Amorim, chief foreign policy adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Dec 08, 2025
A top Brazilian official is warning President Donald Trump that a US military attack on Venezuela could easily spiral out of control into a "Vietnam-style" regional conflict.
Celso Amorim, chief foreign policy adviser to Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, said in an interview published on Monday by the Guardian that a US military strike on Venezuela would inevitably draw nations throughout Latin America into an armed conflict that would be difficult to contain.
"The last thing we want is for South America to become a war zone—and a war zone that would inevitably not just be a war between the US and Venezuela," he said. "It would end up having global involvement and this would be really unfortunate."
Amorim added that "if there was an invasion, a real invasion [of Venezuela]... I think undoubtedly you would see something similar to Vietnam—on what scale it’s impossible to say."
While acknowledging that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is disliked by many other South American leaders, Amorim predicted that even some of Maduro's adversaries would rally to his side in the face of destabilizing military actions by the US government.
He also predicted that anti-US sentiment would surge throughout the continent in the event of an invasion, as there is still major resentment toward the US for backing right-wing military coups during the Cold War in Chile, Brazil, and other nations.
"I know South America," he emphasized. "Our whole continent exists because of resistance against foreign invaders."
The Trump administration in recent weeks has signaled that it plans to launch attacks against purported drug traffickers inside Venezuela, even though reports from the US government and the United Nations have not identified Venezuela as a significant source of drugs that enter the United States.
The administration has also accused Maduro of leading an international drug trafficking organization called the Cartel de los Soles, despite many experts saying that they have seen no evidence that such an organization formally exists.
Trump late last month further escalated tensions with Venezuela when he declared that airspace over the nation was "closed in its entirety," even though he lacks any legal authority to enforce such a decree.
The Washington Post reported on Monday that Maduro is remaining defiant in the face of US pressure, as he is refusing to go into exile despite the threat of an attack on his country.
According to the Post's sources, Maduro's inner circle of allies "shows no signs of imminent collapse," even as he has limited his public appearances and beefed up his personal security amid fears that he could be the target of an assassination attempt.
Keep ReadingShow Less
Mike Johnson Touts $901 Billion Military Budget Plan After Gutting Medicaid, SNAP
"At such a time, bipartisan agreement to provide additional funds to the Pentagon would deliver a cruel message to the American public," advocacy groups warned.
Dec 08, 2025
Republican congressional leaders unveiled a sprawling military policy bill late Sunday that would authorize $901 billion in US military spending for the coming fiscal year, just months after GOP lawmakers and President Donald Trump pushed through the largest-ever cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.), who aggressively pushed cuts to Medicaid by peddling false claims of large-scale fraud, touted the 3,086-page National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) as legislation that would "ensure our military forces remain the most lethal in the world."
The bill, a compromise between House and Senate versions of the annual legislation, would authorize $8 billion more in US military spending than Trump asked for in his 2026 budget request.
If passed, the 2026 NDAA would pump billions of dollars more into the Pentagon, a cesspool of the kinds of waste, fraud, and abuse that Johnson and other Republicans claim to be targeting when they cut safety net programs, stripping health insurance and food aid from millions. The Pentagon has never passed an independent audit and continues to have "significant fraud exposure," the Government Accountability Office said earlier this year.
"The surge in Pentagon spending stands in sharp contrast to the drastic cuts in healthcare and food assistance programs imposed by the reconciliation package."
Final passage of the NDAA would push total military spending authorized by Congress this year above $1 trillion, including the $150 billion in Pentagon funds included in the Trump-GOP budget law enacted over the summer.
Last month, as Common Dreams reported, a coalition of watchdog and anti-war groups implored Congress not to approve any funding above the originally requested $892.6 billion, warning that additional money for the Pentagon would enable the Trump administration's lawless use of the military in US streets and overseas.
The groups also noted that "the surge in Pentagon spending stands in sharp contrast to the drastic cuts in healthcare and food assistance programs imposed by the reconciliation package."
"At such a time," they wrote in a letter to lawmakers, "bipartisan agreement to provide additional funds to the Pentagon would deliver a cruel message to the American public, one out of step with Democratic messaging over healthcare, reconciliation, and the shutdown."
Keep ReadingShow Less
Most Popular