Friday, July 16, 2000
——————————————————————————–
NAACP targets
gun industry
Files class-action lawsuit
against gun manufacturers

——————————————————————————–

By Stephan Archer
? 1999 WorldNetDaily.com

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People is filing a lawsuit today against the nation’s gun industry in an effort to seek significant changes in the gun industry’s business practices and force gun manufacturers to distribute their product responsibly, but gun industry advocates are up in arms over the civil rights group’s latest action.
Steve Dasbach, the national director of the Libertarian Party, expressed concerns about the new lawsuit which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. Referring to the lawsuit as a “racist mistake,” Dasbach said, “With this lawsuit, the NAACP is not only attacking the civil rights of African-Americans, but is also continuing the legacy of the KKK and other racist organizations that have historically tried to keep guns out of the hands of blacks.”

In defense of the lawsuit, Kweisi Mfume, president and CEO of the NAACP, said, “Easily available handguns are being used to turn many of our communities into war zones. The fact that the illegal trafficking of firearms disproportionately affects minority communities in this country is indisputable. Urban communities have sadly become so accustomed to the prevalence of firearms in their neighborhoods that they are no longer shocked at the sound of gunfire.”

Although appearing to help the urban African-American communities, Dasbach said this lawsuit, like all the other gun control measures endorsed by the NAACP, would disproportionately affect minority communities where people are exposed to higher crime rates and slower police response time.

“The NAACP apparently wants to limit the ability of its members to defend themselves and their families against violent crime,” Dasbach said. “That’s shameful enough, but what’s even worse is that this lawsuit continues the disgraceful legacy of white racists who don’t think blacks can be trusted with guns.”

Aaron Zelman, president of Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, is an authority on what he refers to as “200 years of racist ‘gun control’ laws in America.” In his brief historical outline, Zelman shows how gun control laws frequently targeted African-Americans.

An example of one of these laws was a Mississippi law in 1906 which required sellers of firearms to keep records of buyers. The records included indications of race. Another example was the national Gun Control Act, passed in 1968. According to the JPFO, the act was passed not to control guns but to control blacks after race riots occurred in California, New Jersey, and Mississippi.

Speaking of the lawsuit, Zelman said, “We cannot allow black ignorance to destroy the Second Amendment. That’s exactly where this is headed.”

“This kind of dangerous nonsense — this ignorance on behalf of the leadership of the black community — has to be addressed by everyone,” Zelman added. “It’s time for people to tell the leadership of the black community that they’ve been suckered, conned, and scammed by the ‘limousine liberals’ of Washington, DC.”

Commenting again on the gun industry, Mfume said it has refused to take even basic measures to keep criminals and prohibited persons from obtaining firearms. To make his point, he brought up last week’s shootings in Indiana and Illinois where an African-American man, a Korean student, and nine other ethnic and religious minorities were killed by a gunman thought to be part of a white supremacist group.

Although Mfume attacked the gun industry, Elizabeth Saunders, owner of the American Derringer Corporation, a gun manufacturing company in Texas, defended the safety precautions taken by her company as well as other gun manufacturing companies.

“We always sell our guns in the appropriate manner according to ATF (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms) rules and regulations. If we didn’t, we wouldn’t be here,” said Saunders.

Saunders’ company is one of the many defendants in the NAACP lawsuit. Heritage Manufacturing Inc., a small gun manufacturing company in Florida owned by Jay Bernkrant, is another defendant in the suit.

“We, as an industry, are very responsible people,” said Bernkrant. “We’re probably one of the most highly governed industries in the nation. You can ask me about any product that we produced and sold seven years ago, and instantly, we can tell you who we sold it to.”

The NAACP, in defending its lawsuit, pointed out that, according to a 1998 National Vital Statistics Report, African-American males between the ages of 15-24 were almost five times as likely to be injured by firearms as white males in the same age group. Black females in the same age group were about four times as likely to be injured by firearms than their white counterparts.

Commenting on the study, Zelman pointed out that criminal activity starts with criminal intent. Firearms, he said, don’t have criminal intent.

“Either they (the NAACP) are very ignorant about the reality of life or they’re being set up as stooges to promote more gun control schemes,” said Zelman.

Saunders, upset about the lawsuit, thinks the money that will be needed to fight the lawsuit would have been put to better use if it were used for gun education.

“Instead of fighting (this lawsuit), we could take the money and have more education out there and more shooting ranges and things like that for teenagers to actually go out and get experience shooting a gun in a safe manner,” Saunders suggested.

“I think it’s so crazy, and it’s such a frivolous type of situation,” said Bernkrant of the lawsuit. “To try to take the responsibility away from the person who pulled the trigger and try to find some other source — it’s an old story and certainly one that has no credibility in my mind.”

“They’re making a mistake in that they’re not only going to take a responsibility away, they’re going to take a freedom away,” continued Bernkrant. “If this is what they intend to do, then God bless America.”