For years, there has been a bitter war against gun violence pitting stricter restrictions against Second Amendment rights in the city of Gary, IN. The decades-long lawsuit against gun manufacturers just reached a conclusion. In fact, the lawsuit wasn’t just lost, the city was unable to continue the fight or even file another lawsuit in the same vein after legislation enacted over the years rendered the case irrelevant. On May 21, the Indiana Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal over a ruling that ended a lawsuit against 11 gun manufacturers.
The Background
The case began in 1999, when the city filed against gun manufacturers, including Smith and Wesson, Glock, and Beretta, for “negligence,” claiming these companies should be held responsible for weapons sold illegally. This came after Operation Hollowpoint, in which Gary police officers purchased guns and ammunition at federally licensed firearm retailers. The 18-minute video produced by the city showed the officers representing themselves as gun buyers who, although appearing shady, were still able to buy the weapons.
The video captured what happened inside one pawn shop, where a clerk and two undercover officers discussed a 9 mm pistol. The male officer told the clerk he didn’t have a permit to buy the gun, and the female officer said she did. The clerk suggested she buy the gun on behalf of her partner. “Might as well put it in your name then so I don’t have to make a call,” the clerk said. “The feds are constantly screwing with people.”
Scott King, then mayor of Gary, spoke on the video, which depicted other suspicious purchases, saying the evidence showed “how easy juveniles, felons and other prohibited purchasers can acquire guns from legitimate gun dealers through the use of a straw purchaser.”
Straw sales happen when people buy guns from licensed retailers and then resell them to others who, by law, are prohibited from purchasing firearms. ProPublica explained the system, which can be a single purchase or “part of elaborate and organized schemes, where prolific traffickers use others with clean records to purchase multiple guns from one retailer, then head to the next gun shop and repeat the process over and over again.” In Operation Hollowpoint, “Most can be tied back to at least one northwest Indiana gun retailer.”
Should Gun Manufacturers Be Held Accountable?
The lawsuit suggested that gun manufacturers are aware of the straw sales, yet do nothing to try to help prevent them. Indiana lawmakers later passed a law blocking cities from bringing such lawsuits, stating that these kinds of legal pursuits had to originate at the state level. This effectively made the lawsuit inadmissible.
But other laws and decisions throughout the 27-year period affected the city’s claim as well. In 2001, the state passed the Early Firearm Liability Protection Law, limiting lawsuits against manufacturers and sellers. In other words, cities could not easily sue the weapons makers just because criminals used guns in crimes. If someone commits a crime with a firearm that was sold legally, the manufacturer should not automatically be held responsible.
Another blow to Gary’s lawsuit came in 2015, when Indiana passed a retroactive amendment, which some refer to as the Immunity Statute. This strengthened the state’s laws against going after gun manufacturers, but the legislation made it retroactive to just days before Gary had submitted its lawsuit more than ten years earlier.
The court ruled 4-1 to reject the appeal of a December ruling from the Indiana Court of Appeals’ decision that the lawsuit was basically null and void. Brady United, which used to be known as the Brady Campaign and Handgun Control, Inc., spoke out against the court’s decision to reject the appeal. The company’s president, Kris Brown, released a statement chastising the decision:
“What are the gun industry defendants so afraid of? We feel so disappointed today for our client, the City of Gary, which has made near insurmountable strides in reducing gun violence in recent years. Meanwhile, they have also fought hard for the last 25 years simply to tell their story and have a jury of Hoosiers decide what accountability gun companies should face for the public health crisis and trail of terror their negligence created.”
The Gary lawsuit may be over, but the larger debate surrounding gun violence and accountability is still raging across the country. Courts and lawmakers, however, increasingly appear to agree on one thing: Companies should not automatically be held responsible for how criminals misuse a legally made product. Car manufacturers are not sued when drunk drivers cause fatal crashes, nor are knife manufacturers blamed when someone commits a stabbing. Supporters of firearm protections argue the same standard should apply to gunmakers, especially when a crime is committed. After more than 25 years of legal battles, Indiana lawmakers and the courts ultimately concluded that holding gun manufacturers liable for crimes committed by third parties was a line they were unwilling to cross.
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