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http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/04/n...00&en=e88ab496d9ed7111&ei=5062&partner=GOOGLE
Gun Industry Ex-Official Describes Bond of Silence
By FOX BUTTERFIELD
A former senior firearms industry executive said in an affidavit filed in court in San Diego yesterday that gun manufacturers had long known that some of their dealers corruptly sold guns to criminals but pressured one another into remaining silent for fear of legal liability. It is the first time a senior official in the gun industry has broken ranks to challenge practices in the business.
The affidavit, by Robert A. Ricker, a former chief lobbyist and executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, then the main gun industry trade organization, was filed in California Superior Court in support of claims by 12 California cities and counties suing the gun makers and their wholesalers and retail dealers.
The cities, led by Los Angeles and San Francisco, contend that the gun industry has maintained a distribution system that allows many guns to fall into the hands of criminals and juveniles, creating a public nuisance and violating a California law on unfair business practices.
A copy of Mr. Ricker's declaration, filed under seal, was made available to The New York Times.
Mr. Ricker, a moderate in an industry dominated by hard-liners, lost his post as executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council in 1999 after attending a White House meeting with President Bill Clinton to discuss preventing more school shootings like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado.
The meeting was opposed by the National Rifle Association, and Mr. Ricker said in his affidavit that pressure from the rifle association led the gun industry to disband his organization in favor of the more conservative National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Several lawyers for the gun companies, including Lawrence G. Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, now the main gun industry trade group, said they had not yet seen Mr. Ricker's affidavit and therefore could not comment.
In their defense, the gun makers have insisted they do not know what happens after the guns leave the factory, since they are sold to wholesalers and in turn to retail dealers.
But Mr. Ricker, who has been working for more than two decades in the gun industry, including a stint as a lawyer for the N.R.A., said the gun makers had long known that "the diversion of firearms from legal channels of commerce to the black market" takes place "principally at the distributor/dealer level."
"Corrupt dealers" make it easy for criminals and juveniles to buy guns, Mr. Ricker said, by allowing practices like "straw sales," in which an individual buys a gun on behalf of someone who is prohibited from purchasing a gun because of a criminal conviction or his age.
"Leaders in the industry have long known that greater industry action to prevent illegal transactions is possible," Mr. Ricker said, particularly through a network of manufacturers' representatives who stay in close touch with dealers. But industry officials have "resisted taking constructive voluntary action," he said, and have "sought to silence others within the industry."
This has resulted in a "see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach," Mr. Ricker said, and encouraged "a culture of evasion of firearms laws and regulations."
The gun makers became sufficiently concerned about their potential liability, Mr. Ricker said, that they convened annual meetings from 1992 through 1997, which he attended. A major subject was whether it would be good to take voluntary action to better control the distribution of guns.
But, Mr. Ricker said, "the prevailing view was that if the industry took action voluntarily, it would be an admission of responsibility for the problem." Eventually, some of the lawyers decided that even holding the meetings was "dangerous" and they were stopped, Mr. Ricker said.
Dennis A. Henigan, legal director for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said of Mr. Ricker's affidavit, "The consummate insider has now exposed the dirty little secret of the gun industry — that is, the underground market is supplied by corrupt gun dealers, and the industry punishes anyone who tries to stop it."
Mr. Henigan is a co-counsel in the lawsuit by the California cities, which also include Oakland, Sacramento and Los Angeles County.
In a telephone interview from his home in suburban Washington, Mr. Ricker said he had recently served as an expert witness for the gun industry in a related lawsuit, brought by Cincinnati. He said he also still served as a consultant to some gun companies.
But Mr. Ricker said someone in the gun industry needed to speak up about bad dealers because "we've got a bunch of right-wing wackos at the N.R.A. controlling everything."
Left to their own, Mr. Ricker said, many industry executives "would be more than willing to sit down and negotiate a settlement" with the cities about weeding out unscrupulous dealers.
In his affidavit, Mr. Ricker also appeared to undercut another of the gun makers' most common defenses: that because they only sell to federally licensed dealers, they are fully obeying the law and the rest of the job of enforcing the law can be handled by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Mr. Ricker said in the affidavit that the idea that all dealers operate legally because they have a license is a "fiction." He added that "the firearms industry has long known that A.T.F. is hampered" by its shortage of personnel and loopholes in the gun laws. For example, he said, the bureau can inspect a dealer only once a year as a result of a law supported by the rifle association.
