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JUDGE FRANK, WHY HAVEN’T YOU SUED BERETTA?
On June 14, 2025, **Vance Luther Boelter** went to the Brooklyn Park, Minnesota home of state representative **Melissa Hortman** and her husband, **Mark Hortman**, disguised as a police officer. He shot them both to death.
On June 14, 2025, **Vance Luther Boelter** went to the Brooklyn Park, Minnesota home of state representative **Melissa Hortman** and her husband, **Mark Hortman**, disguised as a police officer.
He shot them both to death.
There is no mystery about who did it. Boelter later pleaded guilty to the murders and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms plus forty years. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/vance-boelter-sentenced-two-consecutive-life-terms-plus-40-years-consecutive-stalking?utm_source=chatgpt.com))
There is also remarkably little mystery about the weapon associated with the attack. Federal investigators recovered components of a **Beretta 92 9mm semiautomatic pistol** near the Hortman home. Ammunition in magazines recovered with it bore the same headstamp as discharged casings found at or near the house. Federal records showed that Boelter had purchased that Beretta in approximately January 2000. ([courthousenews.com](https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/boelter-search-warrant.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com))
The manufacturer is **Beretta**.
The killer was **Vance Luther Boelter**.
The dead were **Melissa Hortman and Mark Hortman**.
The weapon was a **Beretta 92 9mm**.
So, **Judge Donovan W. Frank**, we have a question.
**Why haven't you sued Beretta?**
Seriously.
Vance Boelter used a product manufactured by somebody else to kill two people in your own state.
Why aren't you demanding that Beretta answer for the actions of Vance Boelter?
Why aren't you asking why Beretta failed to prevent Boelter from using its product to commit murder?
Why aren't you demanding safeguards capable of detecting that a customer is about to point the company's product at Melissa and Mark Hortman?
Why isn't Beretta being held responsible for what Boelter deliberately did with a Beretta?
The answer is painfully obvious.
**Because Vance Boelter murdered Melissa and Mark Hortman. Beretta didn't.**
Funny how easy personal responsibility is to understand when the tool is made of steel.
Apparently it becomes considerably more difficult when the tool is made of software and the company behind it belongs to Elon Musk.
ENTER GROK
Minnesota's new AI law targets services capable of generating photorealistic fake nude or sexual images of identifiable people without their consent.
xAI challenged the law.
On September 4, U.S. District Judge **Donovan W. Frank** refused xAI's request to temporarily block Minnesota from enforcing it while the litigation proceeds. The law can expose technology companies to penalties reaching **$500,000 per violation**. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/vance-boelter-sentenced-two-consecutive-life-terms-plus-40-years-consecutive-stalking?utm_source=chatgpt.com))
And this is where the logic becomes fascinating.
A person selects a victim.
A person obtains the photograph.
A person uploads it.
A person writes the prompt.
A person asks the AI to alter the photograph.
A person saves the result.
A person distributes it.
And if that person deliberately circumvents safeguards designed to prevent the creation of prohibited material, then that person has gone even further: he has intentionally defeated a mechanism designed to stop him.
So who committed the act?
Apparently this is a difficult question.
We can help.
**The user.**
Exactly as Vance Boelter, not Beretta, murdered Melissa and Mark Hortman.
JUDGE FRANK, FOLLOW YOUR OWN LOGIC
If the principle is that the manufacturer of a tool should answer because somebody deliberately misused that tool, then don't stop at xAI.
Go after Beretta.
Boelter could not have fired a Beretta 92 if Beretta had never manufactured one.
Sue them.
A drunk driver kills somebody in a Ford?
Sue Ford.
Someone beats another person to death with a hammer?
Sue the hammer company.
Someone uses an iPhone to arrange a murder?
Tim Cook, lawyer up.
Someone creates illegal material with Photoshop?
Send the complaint to Adobe.
Why not?
Once responsibility moves from **the person who deliberately performed the act** to **the company that manufactured the tool**, there is no intellectually coherent place to stop.
Unless, of course, the principle isn't really the principle.
THERE IS ONE INTERESTING DIFFERENCE
Vance Boelter is now serving life in prison.
Keeping him there costs the government money.
Investigating criminals costs money.
Police cost money.
Prosecutors cost money.
Trials cost money.
Prisons cost money.
Ordinary offenders are frequently not particularly wealthy.
Elon Musk is.
xAI is a corporation with extraordinarily deep pockets.
And suddenly the direction in which institutional attention travels becomes awfully convenient.
So here's another question for Judge Frank and Minnesota:
**Is this really about finding the person responsible, or is it easier to find the person with money?**
Because if the offender is responsible, prosecute the offender.
If xAI itself committed a separate violation of law, prove that violation and punish xAI for **what xAI did**.
But don't take an action performed deliberately by a human being and magically transport moral responsibility into the bank account of the richest available corporation.
That isn't personal responsibility.
That's shopping for a defendant.
THE DEEP-POCKET THEORY OF JUSTICE
Imagine two identical illegal images.
In the first case, some broke idiot creates one using software written by another broke idiot.
In the second, another idiot creates the same image using Grok.
Same conduct.
Same victim.
Same harm.
Same intention.
But suddenly one case has something the other doesn't.
**Elon Musk.**
And therefore money.
That is precisely why laws assigning liability upstream deserve enormous scrutiny.
Otherwise justice quietly mutates from:
**Who did it?**
into:
**Who can pay?**
Those are not the same question.
AND THEN THERE IS THE JUDGE
This case also demonstrates a larger problem.
We have constructed an extraordinary mythology around judges.
Put a human being in a black robe, elevate the chair by a few feet, call him “Your Honor,” and suddenly we're expected to pretend that the ordinary human operating system has disappeared.
It hasn't.
Judges are people.
They have histories.
They have politics.
They have values.
They have prejudices.
They have sympathies.
They have antipathies.
They have fears.
They have opinions.
They have egos.
Some of those biases they know about.
Some they don't.
The robe changes none of that.
**The robe doesn't delete the operating system underneath it.**
Yet we allow these human beings enormous discretion over liberty, property, corporations and sometimes life itself, while simultaneously maintaining the fiction that justice is blind.
The statue may be blindfolded.
The judge isn't.
MAYBE AI SHOULD REPLACE THE JUDGE
This is precisely why one of the most interesting future applications of artificial intelligence isn't replacing writers, musicians, designers or accountants.
It's replacing judges.
Not tomorrow.
Not with ChatGPT sitting behind a bench improvising criminal law.
With a purpose-built judicial system constructed around statutes, precedent, admissible evidence and explicit rules, whose decisions can be audited and reproduced.
Give it the same legally relevant facts twice.
It should produce the same result twice.
Change the defendant's race while leaving every legally relevant fact unchanged.
Same result.
Change sex.
Same result.
Change religion.
Same result.
Change politics.
Same result.
Change wealth.
Same result.
Change the defendant's name from some anonymous idiot to **Elon Musk**.
Same result.
If the answer changes, the system has failed and the discrepancy can be investigated.
Try performing the same diagnostic test on a human subconscious.
You can't.
THE LAW SHOULD CARE WHO DID IT
Minnesota had no difficulty understanding responsibility after Vance Boelter murdered Melissa and Mark Hortman.
They found Boelter.
They arrested Boelter.
They prosecuted Boelter.
Boelter pleaded guilty.
Boelter received two consecutive life sentences plus forty years. ([justice.gov](https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/vance-boelter-sentenced-two-consecutive-life-terms-plus-40-years-consecutive-stalking?utm_source=chatgpt.com))
The Beretta did not go to prison.
The Beretta 92 did not plan the attack.
Beretta did not disguise itself as a police officer.
Beretta did not choose Melissa Hortman.
Beretta did not choose Mark Hortman.
**Vance Luther Boelter did.**
Now apply precisely the same intellectual standard to artificial intelligence.
If somebody deliberately uses Grok to create illegal material, find him.
Charge him where criminal law applies.
Sue him where civil law applies.
Punish him.
And if xAI itself separately breaks the law, prove that too.
But responsibility for a human being's deliberate act should begin with the human being who deliberately performed it.
So once again, Judge Donovan W. Frank:
Vance Luther Boelter murdered Melissa and Mark Hortman.
He used a Beretta 92 9mm.
You know the killer.
You know the victims.
You know the weapon.
You know the manufacturer.
**Where is your lawsuit against Beretta?**
And if that question sounds ridiculous, perhaps you've just discovered the problem.