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December 16, 1999

HUD misfires

Kenneth D.Smith

He was in a hurry to store his gun because he
had friends coming over. But in his haste, the 23-year-old
Massachusetts man pulled the trigger of his weapon while it was
pointing at his abdomen and shot himself into an estimated $35,000
in medical bills and permanent disability. Under the circumstances,
he did what any normal victim would do these days: sue someone.

He went to court to accuse the gun manufacturer of negligence and
of selling him a defective product. At trial in federal district court, it
emerged that the gun maker had in fact supplied him with copious
warnings that, stretched end to end, approximated the length
of the Oxford English Dictionary (?Never point your pistol at
anything you do not intend to shoot,? and so on), but he
hadn?t bothered to read them. As a general rule, he acknowledged,
the only product literature he read had to do with programming his VCR.
Further the plaintiff had used the weapon twice at a shooting range where
it worked ?fine,? according to his own testimony.

Federal Judge Douglas Woodlock threw the case out in 1996, dismissing some of
the complaint as ?frivolous? and flatly rejecting the rest. But he also
spoke to a much
larger constitutional issue. ?It is the province of legislative or authorized
administrative bodies,? he said, ?and not the judicial branch, to advance
through democratic
channels policies that would directly or indirectly either

1) ban some classes of handguns or
2) transform firearm enterprises into insurers against misuse of their
products.

Frustration at the failure of legislatures to enact laws sufficient to curb
handgun injuries is not adequate reason to engage the judicial forum in
efforts to
implement a broad policy change.?

Comes now a very frustrated Clinton administration to establish just such a
forum. Having watched as gun makers survive case after case in which persons
testing the limits of Darwinian theory do astonishing and terrible things to
themselves with guns, having watched as state and federal lawmakers failed to
arrest and
outlaw the gun industry as a consequence, President Clinton has asked
the Department of Housing and Urban Development to prepare a lawsuit against
the industry that would, in effect, force it to change the way it markets and
sells
its products. By bringing suit through this country?s more than 3,000
government housing authorities, the administration hopes to overwhelm the
industry with litigation
beyond its means to defend and force it to the bargaining table with
some 28 cities and counties that have already brought suit against
gun makers ? so far with little success.

The tobacco industry ?voluntarily? agreed to burn itself ? by raising prices
and reducing marketing of its products ? under just such pressure, something
the courts
or Congress had refused to compel up to that point. One would have thought
that, as Judge Woodlock put the matter, forcing an otherwise legal firearms
industry to
change its job description to get into the insurance business or to get out
of certain product lines would be something better done through democratic
channels, that
is, congressional lawmakers.

Up until recently, making laws was Congress? job, not the president?s. No
more. ?I think we have enormously important public policy goals,?
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart said, ?and if the Republicans,
who control Congress, want to block sensible gun control . . . we will
find a way to do it.?

The administration?s list of demands is not short. Among other things,
it wants the industry to stop selling guns to ?bad apples,? retailers who
have a
habit of selling guns to criminals. Mr. Clinton says that only 1 percent of
federally licensed firearms dealers sell 50 percent of the guns linked to
crime and traced by the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF). One
wonders why the Clinton administration is still licensing such gun dealers if
they are so bad.

By law, gun makers can sell only to licensed dealers. The ATF need only
strip them of their licenses to put them out of business. But apparently
the agency brings the same measure of skill to that task as it does to
raiding religious groups in Waco, Texas. Is that why the administration is
asking the industry to do ATF?s job?

Another proposal is to limit gun sales to one per buyer per month. Such a law
is already in effect in Virginia. Though it may seem a reasonable
restriction to
non-gun owners, the question is what the next restriction will be: one gun
per year? Moreover, there is no evidence that the law has made Virginia or
federal housing
projects any safer.

What is working there is Project Exile, a gun-control regime that works by
putting
persons using guns illegally in federal prison for five years or more. Mr.
Clinton once endorsed the program, which has quickly caught
on around the country, but knows it won?t win him any applause at Democratic
fund-raisers or his
wife?s Senate campaign. So he no longer mentions it. A better target for the
lawsuit would be the agency that has allowed government ?housing? to fester
in a
never-ending cycle of crime and decay ? HUD ? and the big city mayors whose
policies have made their streets safe for gun-toting thugs. Like the sad
plaintiff above, they have wounded themselves grievously through their own
reckless disregard for sound strategy and now seek to cast blame elsewhere.
Here?s hoping their efforts are equally successful.
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