Drizzt
Member
No lawsuit immunity for gun industry
Griffin Dix Wednesday, February 19, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You know my son's story. You've heard it, or ones like it, a hundred times -- and so have the gunmakers.
One Sunday in 1994, my 15-year-old son, Kenzo, was at a friend's house, when the friend decided to show him his father's handgun. Without telling Kenzo what he was doing, the boy took out a clip that had bullets in it and put in an empty clip. That made him think the gun was empty. But the gun's design had tricked him. When he pulled the trigger, the bullet hidden in the chamber killed my son.
My son's friend had fired this same handgun at a shooting range with his father. If the handgun came equipped with a prominent chamber-loaded indicator, a red button showing that a bullet was in the chamber, he would have learned the function of this device and my son would be alive today.
On most days in America, someone dies because a shooter does not know a bullet is hidden in the chamber of a gun. Why does this continue, when we know that safer gun designs would prevent many of these deaths? Because in 1972, when Congress set up the Consumer Product Safety Commission, it stipulated that firearms would be exempt from regulation by the commission. Consequently, gunmakers have failed to build needed safety features into their guns. Now, legislation sponsored overwhelmingly by Republicans in Congress would give the gun industry blanket immunity from lawsuits brought because of the gun industry's irresponsible conduct.
My lawsuit against Beretta USA, argued by lawyers of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, was the first case to be heard by a jury on the theory that guns should have chamber-loaded indicators and also child-resistant integral locks.
In court, Beretta mocked the idea of a gun with an integral lock as an impossibility. But now, four years later, Beretta and numerous other gun companies are building locks into some guns. This would not have happened without my lawsuit and others that followed, because such lawsuits provide the only incentive for gunmakers to make their products safer.
But if the gun lobby's pending legislation becomes law, our family will have no right to seek justice, even though my son was the victim of a defectively designed gun used by another child (a "criminal" use). If he were killed by any other defectively designed product, from a BB gun to an automobile, the manufacturer would be held responsible.
Gun lobby groups argue that the legislation put forward minimizes frivolous lawsuits. If cases like ours were "frivolous," judges would have rejected them. But judges have declared our lawsuit and many others against gunmakers to be legitimate cases that should be tried in court.
If, in accord with the judges' decisions, we get our day in court, we hope and expect to win. Under the law, if there is foreseeable misuse of a product, the product must be designed with the foreseeable misuse in mind, so long as there are better feasible designs.
By not building a simple lock-and-load indicator into its gun, Beretta broke product liability law. Similarly, before auto seat belts and air bags were required, some lawsuits found automakers guilty of failing to install these feasible safety features. Because Congress did not exempt the auto industry from product liability laws, we are all safer.
The stakes for safe gun design are enormous. Built-in locks can help prevent unauthorized users, including teenagers, from getting handguns from their homes and selling them on the illegal market or using them for homicides, crimes, suicides and unintentional shootings. Built-in locks would prevent criminals from using the 170,000 guns that are reported stolen every year.
But gunmakers, their lobby and the members of Congress they influence want to keep all gun markets open -- even the illegal markets for criminals and teenagers who want a gun to commit crimes. How else can you explain Congress' refusal to require a background check at gun shows?
But if lawsuits provide gunmakers with the incentive to build safety features, including locks, into all their guns and monitor the distribution of their products (as other companies do), the lives of many of the 30,000 Americans who die every year from guns could be saved.
Passing this sweeping, unprecedented gun industry immunity legislation is the gun lobby's top priority. But the gun industry should not be given yet another special exemption from our laws.
Griffin Dix is a program director of Physicians for a Violence-Free Society and secretary/treasurer of the California State Council of the Million Mom March.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/19/ED232219.DTL
Griffin Dix Wednesday, February 19, 2003
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You know my son's story. You've heard it, or ones like it, a hundred times -- and so have the gunmakers.
One Sunday in 1994, my 15-year-old son, Kenzo, was at a friend's house, when the friend decided to show him his father's handgun. Without telling Kenzo what he was doing, the boy took out a clip that had bullets in it and put in an empty clip. That made him think the gun was empty. But the gun's design had tricked him. When he pulled the trigger, the bullet hidden in the chamber killed my son.
My son's friend had fired this same handgun at a shooting range with his father. If the handgun came equipped with a prominent chamber-loaded indicator, a red button showing that a bullet was in the chamber, he would have learned the function of this device and my son would be alive today.
On most days in America, someone dies because a shooter does not know a bullet is hidden in the chamber of a gun. Why does this continue, when we know that safer gun designs would prevent many of these deaths? Because in 1972, when Congress set up the Consumer Product Safety Commission, it stipulated that firearms would be exempt from regulation by the commission. Consequently, gunmakers have failed to build needed safety features into their guns. Now, legislation sponsored overwhelmingly by Republicans in Congress would give the gun industry blanket immunity from lawsuits brought because of the gun industry's irresponsible conduct.
My lawsuit against Beretta USA, argued by lawyers of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, was the first case to be heard by a jury on the theory that guns should have chamber-loaded indicators and also child-resistant integral locks.
In court, Beretta mocked the idea of a gun with an integral lock as an impossibility. But now, four years later, Beretta and numerous other gun companies are building locks into some guns. This would not have happened without my lawsuit and others that followed, because such lawsuits provide the only incentive for gunmakers to make their products safer.
But if the gun lobby's pending legislation becomes law, our family will have no right to seek justice, even though my son was the victim of a defectively designed gun used by another child (a "criminal" use). If he were killed by any other defectively designed product, from a BB gun to an automobile, the manufacturer would be held responsible.
Gun lobby groups argue that the legislation put forward minimizes frivolous lawsuits. If cases like ours were "frivolous," judges would have rejected them. But judges have declared our lawsuit and many others against gunmakers to be legitimate cases that should be tried in court.
If, in accord with the judges' decisions, we get our day in court, we hope and expect to win. Under the law, if there is foreseeable misuse of a product, the product must be designed with the foreseeable misuse in mind, so long as there are better feasible designs.
By not building a simple lock-and-load indicator into its gun, Beretta broke product liability law. Similarly, before auto seat belts and air bags were required, some lawsuits found automakers guilty of failing to install these feasible safety features. Because Congress did not exempt the auto industry from product liability laws, we are all safer.
The stakes for safe gun design are enormous. Built-in locks can help prevent unauthorized users, including teenagers, from getting handguns from their homes and selling them on the illegal market or using them for homicides, crimes, suicides and unintentional shootings. Built-in locks would prevent criminals from using the 170,000 guns that are reported stolen every year.
But gunmakers, their lobby and the members of Congress they influence want to keep all gun markets open -- even the illegal markets for criminals and teenagers who want a gun to commit crimes. How else can you explain Congress' refusal to require a background check at gun shows?
But if lawsuits provide gunmakers with the incentive to build safety features, including locks, into all their guns and monitor the distribution of their products (as other companies do), the lives of many of the 30,000 Americans who die every year from guns could be saved.
Passing this sweeping, unprecedented gun industry immunity legislation is the gun lobby's top priority. But the gun industry should not be given yet another special exemption from our laws.
Griffin Dix is a program director of Physicians for a Violence-Free Society and secretary/treasurer of the California State Council of the Million Mom March.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/19/ED232219.DTL
