by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

A 2005 federal law protecting gunmakers from politically-motivated harassment lawsuits has been upheld as constitutional by a federal appeals court that handed anti-gun New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg a stinging defeat by dismissing the city’s lawsuit against the firearms industry.

The lawsuit had been filed in 2000 by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who ultimately repudiated the direction it had taken, but has been pursued for the past few years by Bloomberg.

But in a 2-1 ruling that reversed a lower court decision in December 2005 by federal Judge Jack B. Weinstein, the 2nd US Court of Appeals in Manhattan tossed the lawsuit based on the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. That statute had been passed by Congress to prevent exactly the kind of lawsuit that Bloomberg was trying to push.

Weinstein, seen by many as an activist anti-gun judge, allowed the lawsuit to go forward on the grounds that the city had demonstrated that firearms retailers could be held responsible for the large number of firearms illegally brought into the city that ended up involved in crimes, several news agencies recalled.

Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) said the ruling was “very gratifying to members of the firearms industry.”

“In passing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act,” he noted, “Congress understood that frivolous lawsuits like New York City’s defied common sense and represented a clear abuse of the judicial system that threatened to bankrupt a responsible and law-abiding industry.”

Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, called the ruling, written by Judge Robert J. Miner, “clearly a defeat for Michael Bloomberg.”

“The law trumps a billionaire’s arrogance and a federal judge’s long standing anti-gun activism,” Gottlieb stated. “It is time for Bloomberg to grow up, and for Weinstein to step down.”

Weinstein is presiding over a Bloomberg lawsuit against a Georgia firearms dealer. That lawsuit grew out of the now-infamous “sting” operation Bloomberg launched two years ago against gun dealers in several states, using private investigators and working without the knowledge of local or federal law enforcement. Out of that sting came lawsuits against dealers in five states, and a stern warning from the Department of Justice that such an operation better not happen again. Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives criticized the operation because it jeopardized on-going criminal investigations.

Bloomberg used that sting and subsequent lawsuits to also launch his Mayors Against Illegal Guns, ostensibly created to fight the criminal misuse of firearms in violent urban crime. However, the group has come to be identified as just another anti-gun organization.

NSSF and Gottlieb both took aim at the Brady Campaign for having financially supported many of the municipal lawsuits against gunmakers that began in late 1999, and included the New York City action. NSSF noted that the Miner ruling was “another major setback” for anti-gun lobbying groups, and Gottlieb took a more direct approach.

“This ruling should also send a message to anti-gun extremist groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence that bankrolling frivolous junk lawsuits in an attempt to bankrupt a heavily-regulated, lawful industry must cease,” he commented.

The Brady group was heavily involved in the surge of municipal lawsuits by liberal mayors pushing a gun control agenda in 1999 and 2000. A majority of those lawsuits have been thrown out of court, and in the case of Boston, MA, the lawsuit was withdrawn.

Bloomberg told the Associated Press that he was “disappointed in the court’s decision.” However, he vowed to “continue our fight against illegal guns full bore, in the courtrooms, on the streets and in the Congress.”

New York Corporate Counsel Michael Cardozo told reporters that his office would analyze the ruling before making any decision on a possible appeal.

Gottlieb disdained the notion of carrying the case further.

“Abusing the legal system to harass gunmakers may grab a few cheap headlines, but what does it really accomplish? Criminals still commit crimes with guns they get illegally from illicit sources,” Gottlieb stated.