Washington – The Republican-controlled Congress delivered a long-sought victory to the gun industry on Thursday when the House, with considerable Democratic support, voted to shield firearms manufacturers and dealers from liability lawsuits.
The bill now goes to President Bush, who has promised to sign it.
The gun-liability bill has for years been the No. 1 legislative priority of the National Rifle Association, which has lobbied lawmakers intensely for it. Its final passage, by a vote of 283-144, reflects the changing politics of gun control, from which many Democrats began shying away after Al Gore, who promoted it, was defeated in the presidential election of 2000.
“It’s a historic piece of legislation,” said Wayne LaPierre, the association’s executive vice president, who said the bill was the most significant victory for the gun lobby since Congress rewrote the federal gun-control law in 1986. “As of Oct. 20, the Second Amendment is probably in the best shape in this country that it’s been in decades.”
The bill, which is identical to one approved in July by the Senate, is aimed at ending lawsuits by individuals and municipalities seeking to hold gun manufacturers and dealers liable for crimes committed with their weapons. While it bars such suits, the measure contains an exception allowing certain cases involving defective weapons or criminal behavior by a gunmaker or dealer, such as knowingly selling a weapon to someone who has failed a criminal background check.
Bush said in a statement that he looks forward to signing the bill, which he said would “further our efforts to stem frivolous lawsuits, which cause a logjam in America’s courts, harm America’s small businesses, and benefit a handful of lawyers at the expense of victims and consumers.”
Backers of the measure say it is necessary to keep the American arms industry in business, while opponents say the law deprives gun-violence victims of a legitimate right to sue. Dispirited gun-safety advocates said they now expect attempts to dismiss nearly a dozen lawsuits around the country, and vowed to challenge the constitutionality of the bill in court.
“It’s always been a tough fight, let’s face that,” said Rep. Carolyn McCarthy, D-N.Y., who was elected in 1996 after her husband was killed and her son injured by a gunman on the Long Island Rail Road. “This is personal for me.”
Fifty-nine Democrats joined 223 Republicans and the House’s lone independent to pass the bill. The chief House sponsor of the bill, Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., said the measure received a boost in July, when Pentagon officials wrote a letter saying they supported the measure as a way to “safeguard our national security” by limiting lawsuits against companies that supply weapons to the military.
Stearns said he had been working to pass the legislation for six years. But the big turning point came not in the House, which had previously passed a similar bill, but in the Senate, where Republicans have numbered 55 in the wake of the 2004 elections. The stronger majority enabled Republicans to beat back Democratic amendments that had doomed the measure in the past.
There have been dozens of lawsuits against the gun industry in recent years, most of them dismissed by the courts. In response to those suits, LaPierre said, 33 states have adopted laws similar to the federal bill.
While opponents of the measure said the bill offers special protection for the gun industry, LaPierre said the protection was necessary because, unlike carmakers or pharmaceutical companies, American firearms-makers “don’t have deep pockets.”
But opponents called the bill shameful – “bought and paid for by the NRA,” in the words of Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass.
“We’re going to argue that this statute is literally unprecedented in American history,” said gun-safety advocate Dennis Henigan, “because it is the first time that the federal government will be stepping in and retroactively depriving injured people of their vested legal rights under state law, without providing them any alternative.”