Todd Epp wants to start a Democrat pistol league, but it doesn’t look like lawyers and guns mix:
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.
But maybe guns and Democrats are starting to get along a little better:
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.
And lets not forget about activist Democratic Attornery Generals like Iowa’s Tom Miller and of course the king…New York’s Eliot Spitzer:
The crucial question, then, is whether Spitzer's activism has advanced the common good. There is room for doubt.
Guns. Lawsuits against gun manufacturers have been one of Spitzer's major causes. In 1999 and 2000, he worked hard to get Smith & Wesson to agree to adopt trigger locks, develop "smart gun" technology, change the marketing of its product, and support gun-control legislation. At the last minute, Andrew Cuomo, then Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development and a man who wanted to be governor of New York himself, took over the negotiating, snatching credit away from Spitzer. But what both men were doing was using the threat of litigation to get the company to agree to government regulations that Congress and state legislators were unwilling to enact. Moreover, they were trying to exploit Smith & Wesson's market power to get other companies to follow suit. According to the settlement, Smith & Wesson would be able to sell only through dealers who accepted a variety of restrictions. As Walter Olson, a critic of the arrangement, put it, "If dealers and gun shows wanted to stock the dominant manufacturer's line, they'd have to agree to stop promoting disfavored, competitive product lines."
It didn't work. Dealers started dropping Smith & Wesson, and other gun companies pulled out of a joint legal defense with it. Spitzer's response was to threaten lawsuits against the non-cooperating companies.
Spitzer and Cuomo also made another run at gun makers. Working with big-city mayors, Spitzer sued the firearm manufacturers on the theory that guns are a "nuisance," just like drifting smoke or stray dogs, that keeps people from enjoying their homes. The case was thrown out of court. Spitzer appealed, and it was thrown out again. The appeals court ruled that "[s]uch lawsuits could be leveled not merely against these defendants, but well beyond them, against countless other types of commercial enterprises, in order to address a myriad of societal problems - real, perceived or imagined - regardless of the distance between the causes of the problems and their alleged consequences, and without any deference to proximate cause." Also: "Courts are the least suited, least equipped, and thus the least appropriate branch of government to regulate and micro-manage the manufacturing, marketing, distribution and sale of handguns."
And here is the argument to pass the Senate bill:
The gun makers aren't seeking immunity from all liability; they would continue to face civil suits for defective products or for violating sales regulations. The Senate proposal would merely prevent a gun maker from being pillaged because a criminal used one of its products to perform his felony. Murder can be committed with all kinds of everyday products, from kitchen knives to autos, but no one thinks GM is to blame because a drunk driver kills a pedestrian. (On the other hand, give the lawyers time.) To adapt a familiar line, guns don't kill industries; lawyers do.
Lets not forget that Tom Miller did go after an auto dealer for a lot less than a drunk driver killing a pedestrian. And that action "fatally wounded" the South Dakota business.
