U.S. Court Rejects New York Gun Lawsuit

[beevul]

U.S. Court Rejects New York Gun Lawsuit
By Alan Feuer

A federal appeals court dismissed New York City’s blanket lawsuit against the gun industry on Wednesday, ruling that a relatively new federal law protects gunmakers against third-party litigation.

The appellate ruling killed off — once and for all, perhaps — legal efforts by the city to charge gunmakers and distributors with knowingly flooding illicit, underground markets with their weapons. The suit, initially filed in 2000, was debated so much nationally that former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was even criticized during his presidential campaign for having initially supported it.

In December 2005, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, of United States District Court in Brooklyn, allowed the suit to move forward despite protests by gunmakers like Beretta U.S.A., Browning Arms, Colt Manufacturing, Glock and Smith & Wesson, which pointed to a federal law passed two months earlier in October. That law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, banned all third-party suits against the gun industry except for those in which a plaintiff could prove that gunmakers had violated other state or federal statutes in their sales and marketing practices.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration argued that the gun manufacturers, by failing to monitor retail dealers closely enough, allowed guns to end up in the hands of criminals. As a result, the manufacturers created a “condition that negatively affects the public health or safety,” the city said and, thus, violated New York State’s public nuisance law.

But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, ruling that the state nuisance law did not constitute a permissible exception under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/us-court-rejects-new-york-gun-lawsuit/?hp

What will bloombergs next strategy be?

[SlipperySlope]

1. N/T

N/T

[maxidivine]

2. Bloomberg's next strategy-

Will probably to go public with the statement that "guns are bad"

[SteveM]

3. Bloomberg gots to blame SOMEBODY (nt)

[old mark]

4. About 2 years ago, with much publicity,

Bloomberg and several others filed charges of illegally selling guns to
"straw purchasers", but the charges were filed against gun shops in states neighboring NY. Bloomberg stated that much of NYC's violent crime
was caused by lax gun laws or lax enforcement of illegal sales in PA and Ohio, and named a list of gun shops in these stated.
One of these is near my home, and I have shopped there.
Several months ago I was told that, this time with NO publicity, the charges against this shop and several others were dropped.
There was evidently no evidence against these shops other than the statements of the agents who bought guns in these shops.
In the shop near me, every gun transaction is recorded on video cameras, and playback of the transaction revealed nothing at all illegal about it.

The owner may sue Bloomberg and NYC.

No publicity about that, either.

mark