Not a Victory for Gun Manufacturers

This is what a spokesman for gun manufacturers had to say after a court ruling throwing out an NAACP lawsuit against those manufacturers:

A gun industry spokesman, Lawrence Keane, said he had not seen the ruling, but welcomed the outcome.

"It's regrettable that the industry ever had to defend itself against such a frivolous lawsuit," said Keane, general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation (search). He estimated that the manufacturers spent $10 million on their defense.

I'm guessing he won't be too happy once he reads the ruling.

"It [the NAACP suit] failed, however, to show that its harm was different in kind from that suffered by other persons in New York," Weinstein added.

Despite ruling against the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the judge found that its lawyers had established "clear and convincing evidence" that gun retailers are guilty of "careless practices."

Manufacturers take too few measures, he wrote, "to eliminate or even appreciably reduce the public nuisance they individually and collectively have created." Among the "obvious steps," he said, would be requiring retailers to ban multiple sales to the same customers.

The NAACP lawsuit was filed against gun manufacturers and essentially stated that the manufacturers were doing nothing about corrupt dealers knowingly selling guns to criminals in minority neighborhoods. In his ruling, the judge did not dispute this--in fact, the ruling backs that concept in dramatic tones--but did dispute the racial aspect of the suit.

Make no mistake: this is not a victory for the gun manufacturers or gun owners. It will likely lead to further lawsuits in New York against the manufacturers, only without the racial overtones. Anti-gun groups will search for sympathetic courts in which to file similar suits across the country, and those suits will lead to courts deciding where, how, and what kinds of guns can be sold by manufacturers and dealers.

For the anti-gun crowd, this was a successful failure. The judge was kind enough to give them an idea of how to proceed in the future, and the results over the next few years will likely be dramatic for gun owners and the future of the industry in the United States. Like the anti-tobacco zealots, the groups arrayed against gun ownership in the US will litigate the death of an industry that they couldn't legislate away.

Read the story.

Posted by zombyboy at July 21, 2003 10:33 AM | TrackBack