NY Times Critical of NYC Gun Law
Date: Feb 6, 2005 8:50 PM
FYI (copy below):
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/06/opinion/opinionspecial/06olson.html?oref=login&oref=login&oref=login
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The Wrong Target
By WALTER OLSON

Published: February 6, 2005

IN January, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg signed a bill passed
by the City Council making gun makers and dealers liable for
crimes perpetrated with their products unless they adopt a
“code of conduct” that, among other things, would limit the
number of handguns they can sell to one person and require
background checks on prospective buyers at gun shows. The
strange thing about this new law is that it applies not only
to sales within New York City, but also to sales in other
states and cities.

This new law is too clever by half and it’s also
shortsighted. It insults the right to democratic
self-governance of the 273 million Americans who don’t live
in New York City. Moreover, it may have a consequence that
Mayor Bloomberg and other gun-control advocates have not
foreseen: it could be further impetus for a bill in
Congress, nearly enacted last year, which would pre-empt
local efforts at gun-control through litigation.

It’s hardly a secret that New York City is out of step with
the rest of the country on issues involving firearms. But
there’s no need to reargue the gun control controversy to
appreciate a few basic points.

First, whatever the merits of the city’s gun permit process,
which makes it nearly impossible for ordinary residents to
own guns lawfully, it’s an act of aggression against
citizens of other states to try to control gun sales
nationwide, as the new ordinance would do. The residents of
Georgia, Idaho, Indiana and Vermont happen to prefer a
different balance on gun liberty, and New Yorkers have no
more right to pass a law overriding their chosen policy
than, say, social conservatives in Salt Lake City or
Cincinnati have a right to pass a law about the sale of
alcohol or indecent literature in New York – no matter how
annoyed they may be that some of those products make their
way into their states.

And second, again leaving aside the merits of gun control as
a policy in itself, it is wrong to try to smuggle such
controls in through the back door by punishing dealers for
gun sales that were lawful at the time. Yet under the new
ordinance, distant gun manufacturers and dealers could be
made to pay damages for a shooting in New York City even if
the presence of the gun here did not result from any bad
acts of theirs. For example, under the new law, if a gun
had been stolen in a burglary from a lawful Florida owner,
the manufacturer and dealer could be legally responsible for
death or injury to a person in Queens. Their only defense
would be to show that they had adopted the city’s stringent
new guidelines, which go well beyond current federal law.

Last year, Congress nearly passed a law that would have
forbidden most lawsuits by crime victims against gun makers
and dealers. Indeed, the bill was defeated only by
opponents attaching an amendment that would have renewed the
assault-weapons ban, a step intended as a poison pill to get
gun-rights groups to withdraw their support for the bill,
which they did.

When the issue returns in this year’s (more pro-gun)
Congress, Mr. Bloomberg’s new law is likely to serve as a
prime exhibit of the case for federal pre-emption on the
issue of gun liability. The new city law makes it
absolutely clear that anti-gun enclaves intend to inflict
their will on other states. Lawmakers from the rest of the
country will then, appropriately, move to defend their
states’ preference through federal legislation.

The mayor and City Council of New York seem to think they
can make laws that bind the rest of the country. That’s an
arrogant stance – and when the rest of the country is heard
from, it’s apt to be a losing stance as well.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is
the author, most recently, of “The Rule of Lawyers.”