Gunning For Trial Lawyers

The 2nd Amendment, which is supposed to guarantee Americans the right to keep and bear arms, has been under constant attack by the anti-gun nuts for years. There are literally volumes of regulations and laws on the books regulating firearms, and every time there is a violent incident, Congress or State Legislatures jump in with new laws that nobody enforces.

The latest tactic against the firearms industry are these ridiculous product liability lawsuits which attempt to extort money from gun manufacturers because someone misuses their product. This is basically the same legal theory as suing Ford because a Ford owner drove drunk and killed somebody. None of these lawsuits have been successful, but they've wasted a lot of the gun industry's money, which is really the main goal.

Congress is about to put a stop to these nuisance lawsuits:

If we recall correctly, it was Shakespeare who wrote "the first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers." That's going too far, but the Senate can do the metaphoric equivalent this week by voting to protect gun makers from lawsuits designed to put them out of business.

Senate Republicans say they have 60 votes to pass the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which would protect gun makers from lawsuits claiming they are responsible for crimes committed with their products. The support includes at least 10 Democrats, which speaks volumes about the political shift against "gun control" in recent years.

The "assault weapons ban" expired with a whimper last year. State legislatures have been rolling back firearm laws because the restrictions were both ineffectual and unpopular. Gun-controllers have responded by avoiding legislatures and going to court, teaming with trial lawyers and big city mayors to file lawsuits blaming gun makers for murder. Companies have been hit with at least 25 major lawsuits, from the likes of Boston, Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago and Cleveland. A couple of the larger suits (New York and Washington, D.C.) are sitting in front of highly creative judges and could drag on for years. ...

Gun makers have yet to lose a case, but these victories have cost more than $200 million in legal bills. This is a huge sum for an industry collectively smaller than any Fortune 500 company and that supports 20,000 jobs at most. Publicly listed companies such as Smith & Wesson have seen the legal uncertainty reflected in their share price. Money for legal fees could be better spent creating new jobs, researching ways to make guns safer, or returning profits to shareholders.

Congress has every right to stop this abuse of the legal system, all the more so because it amounts to an end-run around its legislative authority. A single state judge imposing blanket regulations on a gun maker would effectively limit the Second Amendment rights of gun buyers across the nation. Liability legislation would also send a message that Congress won't stand by as the tort bar and special interests try to put an entirely lawful business into Chapter 11.

If a person gets mad at his neighbor, grabs a hammer and kills him, should the hammer manufacturer be sued for the misuse of his product? Of course not, and yet that is the approach taken by the cities and lawyers in these gun cases. A gun is a tool, just like the hammer. They don't just go off by themselves or start randonmly shooting people. Guns don't roam neighborhoods at night looking for victims. It is their illegal misuse that causes problems, not the fact that they exist.

Frankly, I've always been a proponent of 'right to carry' laws which would allow law abiding citizens to carry concealed weapons. Many states have such laws and research has indicated that violent crime rates involving guns have not gone up in those states, and in fact have gone down. Why? They say an armed society is a polite society, and the bad guys just might be a little reluctant to pull a gun in a public place knowing that some of their 'victims' just might be able to shoot back.

I would like to see Congress pass a national 'right to carry' law which would mandate that all states issue permits to citizens who meet the requirements. I have no problem with the idea that law abiding citizens around me in public places might be armed. When I travel to Texas (which has a 'right to carry' law), I don't feel any less safe than I do in California.

It's time to get a little sanity back in gun laws.