Friday, January 29, 1999
Mayors push anti-handgun legislation
Cities are encouraged to sue manufacturers
BY MICHAEL JANOFSKY
The New York Times
WASHINGTON — In a sign that the assault on the gun industry is gaining political momentum, mayors from around the country announced Thursday that they were helping to prepare federal legislation to slow the circulation of handguns and were urging more cities to sue manufacturers and dealers.
Mayor Edward Rendell of Philadelphia, head of a U.S. Conference of Mayors task force on gun violence, said he had been working with several members of Congress on a measure that would forbid anyone to buy more than one handgun a month, would crack down on unlicensed sales at gun shows and would give the Consumer Product Safety Commission the kind of authority over real guns that it has over toy guns.
In remarks to several hundred mayors at their annual winter meeting, Mr. Rendell said he had been persuaded to seek federal legislation after the failure of his own talks with manufacturers to solve gun-related problems in Philadelphia.
“With them,” he said, “it all boils down to the same refrain: Guns don't kill people. People kill people.”
Mr. Rendell long ago became the first big-city mayor to suggest that municipalities could recoup medical, law-enforcement and other costs stemming from gun violence by suing the makers. While Philadelphia has not yet sued, four other municipalities have: New Orleans and Chicago first, followed by Miami-Dade County and Bridgeport, Conn., which filed their suits Wednesday.
Cincinnati City Council began the process toward a similar lawsuit Wednesday by directing city lawyers to draw up an enabling ordinance.
(Thursday story)
In general, the suits charge that the industry is liable either for failing to provide sufficient safety devices on its products or for stimulating an illicit trade by flooding given areas with more weapons than a legitimate, market could ever accommodate.
Richard J. Feldman, executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, a trade organization that represents many gun makers and is a defendant in the suits, said that the mayors' initiatives were largely misguided. The mayors “point fingers,” Mr. Feldman said, because their own efforts at fighting crime have failed.
But he said the industry would support gun safety oversight, although not by the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which, Mr. Feldman said, lacks expertise.
“We would not be opposed to ATF having that authority,” he said of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Mr. Rendell said several senators had expressed interest in co-sponsoring the legislation. But he named only Democrats, which suggested that the bill might not have bipartisan support.
Mayor Paul Helmke of Fort Wayne, Ind., a Republican, conceded that Mr. Rendell's initiative would be a hard sell to many Republican lawmakers, especially those from states with large numbers of gun owners.
“All mayors want to end gun violence,” Mr. Helmke said. “The question is, can he support the Second Amendment” — on the right to bear arms — “and still find a way to make restrictions on small guns?”
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