by Dave Workman
Senior Editor
A lawsuit by the city of New York against more than a dozen gun shops around the country—claiming that these dealers are the source for many of the guns that illegally find their way to the streets of New York—will be allowed to go forward, thanks to a ruling by US District Judge Jack Weinstein.
A trial date of Jan. 7, 2008 was set.
Attorneys for those gun shops had argued that New York could not sue them because they do no business inside the city limits. Weinstein rejected that argument. According to Associated Press and Atlanta Journal Constitution, Weinstein said the city had demonstrated “with a high degree of probability” that these gun shops, because of their business practices, had been “responsible for the funneling into New York of large quantities of handguns used by local criminals to terrorize significant portions of the city’s population.”
This is not the first time that this judge has ruled against some segment of the firearms industry. The 86-year-old senior judge is widely viewed as an activist who pushes the envelope on tort litigation. He is a judge that the anti-gunners seek to try their novel lawsuits.
“This is vintage Judge Weinstein,” said Lawrence Keane, vice president and counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF).
Keane noted that Weinstein has a track record of bias against the firearms industry.
“No other judge in America has a more biased or distorted view,” Keane stated.
The ruling was hailed by anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, whose controversial “sting” operation last year set these lawsuits in motion. That effort, criticized as a “rogue operation” and “vigilante enterprise,” was mounted by Bloomberg using private investigators with no law enforcement authority. The operation drew a stern rebuke from the Justice Department, which cautioned Bloomberg’s office against any similar efforts in the future.
“Judge Weinstein has ignored the fact that the Department of Justice has strongly admonished the Bloomberg administration to not engage in that activity again,” Keane said.
Weinstein, according to the news agencies, said because the dealers knew their business conduct was contributing to the flow of illegal guns into New York, this brings their businesses under the city’s jurisdiction. Gun shops in Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina and Ohio contended they cannot be sued in a New York federal court.
“The activities which the defendants are alleged to be involved in are illegal and against the public interest in all states,” Weinstein said in his 99-page opinion.
At the heart of this case are allegations that the gun shops in question are linked to the sales of hundreds of firearms that have been used to commit crimes in New York. These guns were allegedly obtained through illegal “straw purchases” in which one person filled out the paperwork, but another person actually paid for the gun and took possession for later sale to criminals in New York.
Of the five gun shops sued in Georgia, three have reached out-of-court settlements with New York that essentially allow the city to dictate their business practices by way of a “special master” appointed by the court to monitor their gun sales. Other gun shops are fighting back, including a couple that have filed countersuits against Bloomberg.
One of those shops is Adventure Outdoors in Georgia, which filed a $400 million libel suit against Bloomberg and the city in a federal court in Atlanta. That store was linked to at least eight federal prosecutions for illegal purchases between 1995 and 2005 and to five specific crimes committed with guns in New York between 1996 and 2001, according to published reports.
Also fighting the lawsuits are shops in the Richmond, VA area including A-1 Jewelry and Pawn, and Triple-A Pawn Brokers.