Defying a new Pennsylvania state law, Philadelphia on April 11 filed suit against 14 gunmakers, including Smith & Wesson, the company that cut a deal with the White House to escape such suits.
The Philadelphia suit alleges the gun companies created a public nuisance with products that end up being used in crimes, according to Reuters news service.
The civil lawsuit, filed in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, was filed more than two years after former Philadelphia Mayor Edward Rendell became the first leader of a US city to promote such litigation. The suit was announced as part of a broader crime-fighting initiative.
Philadelphia, the fifth largest US city, has the nation’s highest rate of gun-related homicides.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which represents 1,800 gun manufacturers, distributors and retailers, said the Philadelphia suit was "short on legal foundation and long on political motivation." (See related story on a Riverside, CA, suit on Page 2 of this issue.)
Launched in defiance of a newly minted state law prohibiting Pennsylvania cities from filing frivolous lawsuits against gun companies, the suit alleges that firearms makers knowingly create a public nuisance by distributing guns that wind up at crime scenes.
City officials said the lawsuit exposed a loophole in the state law signed by Republican Gov. Tom Ridge in December.
"We will hold gun makers accountable," said Mayor John Street, who took over from fellow Democrat Rendell in January.
The lawsuit added Philadelphia to a list of 30 US cities and counties that have sued gunmakers. Philadelphia officials say the trend began in early 1998 when Rendell hired Temple University law professor David Kairys to draft a suit against gun makers for the city.
Gun law experts and lobbyists widely credit the former Philadelphia mayor, who is now chairman of the Democratic National Committee, with being the first city leader to consider action. His efforts led to the filing of the first suits by New Orleans and Chicago in late 1998, as well as meetings within the US Conference of Mayors (USCM) at which concerted action by many cities was seen as a way of crushing the firearms industry.
But Rendell ultimately chose to pursue negotiations with firearms industry trade associations and the NRA, which favors the enforcement of existing gun laws over the creation of new gun control restrictions. Kairys, however, took the draft of his novel legal theories to several other cities, including Chicago, and to the US Conference of Mayors. He also collaborated with the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, a tax exempt arm of Handgun Control Inc. The Center is providing legal assistance to many of the cities that have filed the Kairys-style suits.
Meanwhile, the Rendell administration, the US Justice Department and the NRA unveiled a $2.25 million initiative in January 1999 to punish Philadelphia offenders who violated existing federal gun laws.
Known as "Operation Cease Fire" and billed as a potential model for other large cities, the initiative was credited for the arrest of 291 federal gun law violators last year. All but 10 either pleaded guilty or were convicted at trial.
But federal authorities complained that Operation Cease Fire never has received a budgeted $750,000 in donations from local business leaders needed to fund a crucial public advertising campaign.
Aside from suing gunmakers, Street said the city’s new crime-fighting initiative would make 6,000 gun locks donated through the NSSF’s Project HomeSafe and North American Arms available free to city residents who legally own handguns. The mayor also elevated Philadelphia Police Commissioner John Timoney to a new cabinet-level post for public safety.
The Street administration also threw its support behind a state bill that would make it a felony to transport illegal drugs across a county line.