Yep, Food Manufactures made Rosie fat and gun Manufactures make people commit crimes
Lawsuit-Leery Food Makers Cut Fat to Save Lives, But Gun Makers Do Nothing
Feature Story
by Dick Dahl
Lawsuits and legal threats against fast-food restaurants and food
manufacturers have produced easy material for stand-up comics and glib
newspaper columnists everywhere. But largely overlooked among the hoots
and laughter is the fact that the fear of litigation is prompting an
industry to change its fat-pushing ways.
On July 1, Kraft Foods, Inc., the nation's biggest maker of processed
foods, announced that it would be developing new standards to reduce fat
and make its product line more nutritious in response to growing legal
blame for obesity and unhealthy eating trends. Kraft's announcement
follows PepsiCo's recent pledge to eliminate trans fats from its chip
products, and McDonald's claim that it will trim trans fats from its
cooking oils. While these steps may seem silly because the fattiness of
chips and McDonald's "value meals" is well-known, the ubiquity of
unacknowledged fat in fast food and processed food has created a situation
that many physicians and public-health professionals call an epidemic that
kills thousands of people every year.
These steps by Kraft and others are prime examples of how the American
tort system can bring about positive change even when cases don't go to
court. Threats of lawsuit can prompt companies to become less
irresponsible, as the actions of these companies have demonstrated.
But if the food industry is changing its practices over the seemingly
negligible issue of fat content, why should manufacturers of firearms,
which are lethal by design, be exempt from lawsuits? But that is what the
gun industry and the National Rifle Association are seeking, in the form
of a bill that seeks to immunize the gun industry from nearly all civil
lawsuits. The bill has already passed the House and is awaiting action in
the Senate, where it has 54 co-sponsors.
Even though gun makers and the National Rifle Association (NRA) say they
are pushing for the bill as a way to stop frivolous lawsuits and greedy
plaintiff lawyers, legal analysts say the bill goes much further and would
immunize the industry from all but the most egregious product-liability
suits. For instance, the nine families who brought suit against the gun
dealer and the manufacturer that supplied the weapon used by the D.C.-area
snipers last fall would be prevented from continuing their action --
despite the fact that a Tacoma, Wash., judge has already determined that
there is sufficient evidence of irresponsibility for the case to move
forward.
On June 27, Washington state Superior Court Judge Frank E. Cuthbertson
ruled that Maine-based Bushmaster Firearms, Inc. "knew or should have
known that Bull's Eye Shooter Supply" (the Tacoma gun dealership from
which the weapon used by the snipers mysteriously "disappeared") "was
operating its store in a reckless or incompetent manner, creating an
unreasonable risk of harm." On July 28, the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald
reported that Bushmaster's owner, Richard Dyke, a Republican fund-raiser
with ties to President Bush, is "using as much congressional influence as
he can muster" to pass the immunity bill and get his company off the hook.
To Dennis Henigan, director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence's
Legal Action Project, Dyke's action typifies the attitude of an industry
that already enjoys special protection as virtually the only consumer
product not regulated for health and safety by a federal agency. "They
don't want people to know the truth," he said, "because the more people
learn about gun makers and gun dealers and the way that they conduct
themselves, the more they're going to demand reform."
Their response -- running to lawmakers for special protection -- is a mark
of how the gun industry is different from others, Henigan said. Comparing
the immunity-bill effort to the food industry's voluntary fat-reduction
action, Henigan said, "What's unique about the gun industry is this other
force, the NRA, outside the industry. It's very difficult for business
people in the gun industry to make rational, business-oriented decisions
because they've got this giant, irrational but powerful force out there
that will punish them if they do."
There is ample evidence to support Henigan's assertion. In the late 1990s,
several cities filed lawsuits against the gun industry based on the legal
argument of the tobacco lawsuits that resulted in a multi-billion-dollar
settlement. The gun plaintiffs, like the tobacco plaintiffs, contended
that the industry bore a responsibility for paying part of the
public-health costs associated with their products. When Smith & Wesson
reached an agreement with the federal government in 2000 that it would
install childproof trigger locks and develop personalized "smart gun"
technology, the NRA called for a boycott of the Massachusetts-based gun
maker. Its effect crippled the company, prompting CEO Ed Shultz to resign.
After Smith & Wesson's parent company, Tompkins PLC of England, sold the
company to buyers who included a former Smith & Wesson sales chief, the
boycott ended and the company rebounded.
To Henigan, the Smith & Wesson agreement and the subsequent NRA-led
boycott comprised a critical crossroads for the industry and for gun
control in the U.S. "The other major manufacturers could very well have
initiated discussions to try to achieve an industry-wide settlement at
that point because they were given tremendous cover by Smith & Wesson," he
said. "Instead of doing that, they went in the opposite direction because
of their terror of the NRA."
Robert Ricker, a former NRA lawyer and high-ranking spokesman for the gun
industry, confirms Henigan's assessment. Ricker, an industry whistle
blower who has appeared on CBS TV's "60 Minutes" and as an expert witness
in the recent NAACP lawsuit in New York City, told Join Together Online
that in the late 1990s the gun industry was seriously considering a much
more cooperative working relationship with federal regulators and
law-enforcement agencies.
"Back in the mid-'90s you started hearing rumblings about cities bringing
lawsuits and class-action lawsuits modeled after tobacco, and the question
arose, 'How are we going to handle this stuff?'," said Ricker, who was
executive director for the American Shooting Sports Council at the time.
"There was a split in the industry. I was of the belief that it would be
far less expensive and you would get a much greater public-relations push
if you started working actively with ATF and law enforcement and
responsible gun dealers' organizations."
Ricker said the other side favored the "circle the wagons" approach, which
was strongly pushed by the NRA and "the other strong pro-Second Amendment
types." When the Smith & Wesson accord was announced, it became clear that
the wagons were circling, he said. The NRA pressure, of course, was a huge
factor. But by then, a number of the municipal lawsuits had been filed,
prompting gun manufacturers' defense lawyers to tell their clients to
"just keep their mouths shut, hunker down, and fight this out. That was
what finally pushed the industry over to the 'circle the wagons' side."
Ricker's problem with this approach, he says, is that he was aware that
gun manufacturers had far greater knowledge of how their wares were ending
up in the wrong hands than they were letting on. He said manufacturers
have long known that there are too many irresponsible dealers, that they
know who they are, and what they do. That is, he said, many manufacturers
are aware of the dealers who sell guns illegally and work hand-in-hand
with gun traffickers who supply illegal markets.
Ricker said he decided to quit because "my feeling was that many in the
industry were just not being responsible." For a while, he worked for a
California company, Forensic Technologies, which developed the
ballistics-fingerprinting technology now being used by the Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF). "Then when President Bush was
elected and he appointed John Ashcroft as attorney general, it became
clear that the political tide was changing in the area of firearms," he
said. So he stepped forward and blew the whistle, he says, "because I felt
very strongly that the public needed to know what I knew in terms of what
the industry could do voluntarily."
When the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
(NAACP) sued gun manufacturers, claiming that firearms create a public
nuisance in New York City and that gun makers bore a responsibility for
it, they called upon Ricker to be an expert witness. When Judge Jack
Weinstein issued his ruling on July 21, most newspaper headlines focused
on his conclusion that the NAACP had failed to make its case that it had
suffered more as the result of illegal guns than other groups and
populations in New York. However, as Ricker points out, the judge also
concluded that the NAACP had succeeded in demonstrating that widespread
access to illegal firearms has created a public nuisance to the entire
population of New York City.
"The flow of guns into criminal hands in New York would substantially
decrease if manufacturers and distributors insisted that retail dealers
who sell their guns be responsible," Weinstein wrote.
"I'm actually sitting here wondering if the gun industry is going to
appeal the decision," Ricker said. "This opinion is devastating to the gun
industry. The findings of fact and the findings of law that Judge
Weinstein makes in this decision are going to hurt them in other cases."
But Weinstein's findings of fact and law will mean nothing for future
cases if Congress passes the immunity bill. If Congress passes it, there
will be very few cases allowed against the gun industry, and the degree to
which Bushmaster will be held accountable for its role in the D.C.-area
sniper killings will never be sorted out. Even though a Superior Court
judge in the state of Washington has ruled that there is sufficient
evidence for the case to proceed, the plaintiffs who are seeking to find
out if corporate irresponsibility played a hand in the loss of their loved
ones will be barred from court by the NRA and the Congressmen who fear
them and benefit from their lavish largesse.
At the end of July, 54 senators -- nine of them Democrats -- had signed on
as co-sponsors. The only hope to defeat the bill is a filibuster, but a
filibuster can be overcome if 60 senators vote to defeat it. In other
words, the current majority only needs six votes to pave the way for a
historic act: nearly full-blown legal immunity for an entire industry.
Ricker believes that Democrats who think they can be re-elected in 2004 by
appeasing the NRA and voting to immunize the gun industry are making a big
mistake.
"Having worked the halls of Congress from the gun side, I've seen how
people change their political views just because they're afraid for their
political skin," he said. "And the only thing it does is that it makes the
NRA leaner and meaner."
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