Boston Holsters Gun Suit

Boston has voluntarily dropped its civil suit against the gun industry. It was one of 16 suits in which 25 cities charged the gun businesses – trade groups and distributors – with responsibility for gun violence.

The city had no dollar figure. The suit ended too early for that.

Why?

Money, said Mayor Thomas Menino.

Current economics are awful. So things like a lawsuit promising gargantuan cash layouts before any returns are budget vulnerable. Had Boston gone to court, it would have cited negligence in marketing and distribution, poor gun design and the failure to keep guns from criminals. The city had 31 defendants, including Glock and Taurus.

The Suffolk County Court allowed the suit to be scotched and both left with a joint resolution that asks the industry to devote more resources to combating violence in Boston.

Meanwhile, the other 16 cases continue.

Could it be that Boston thought it would lose, forfeiting all the effort of its legal talent and lots of taxpayer money?

There have been 21 other suits.

Camden County, N.J.; New Orleans, Miami and Bridgeport, Conn., all brought cases and all lost their appeals. Five other suits are on appeal, having been dismissed by lower courts.

Actually, Boston’s case made it a longer way than most suits, having been upheld on a motion to dismiss in Suffolk Superior Court and the state’s Appeals Court. Still, the money was getting pretty steep.

Anyway, the industry made some solid promises to include locking devices, improve safety features and do further research on safety technology. That, along with the new Massachusetts law on all firearms meeting safety standards, made Menino apparently comfortable in leaving the court fight to others.

Both sides came away from their settlement claiming a win.

Gun companies showed they were moving toward safety.

Boston could say some pressure from the city’s suit helped achieve that (partial) goal of increased safety.

Of course, the one thing neither the city nor the gun industry reflected in court is that the nature of this nation had changed hugely since the lawsuit began in 1999.

In 1999, when 28,874 people died in gun-related incidents, the nation was at peace.

Now, the nation is at war.

Certainly no war has been formally declared by Congress. But a war is surely happening.

We have not declared war because the enemy is not a nation, it is international terrorism. It lives everywhere.

Yes, it even lives right here in the United States. Those 18 suicide bombers who took jumbo jets – two from Boston’s Logan International Airport – and flew them into New York’s twin-towered World Trade Center, the Pentagon and to an unintentional crash into a field in Pennsylvania, all lived in the United States.

These terrorists showed – so horrifyingly – that enormous damage can be done without anything more lethal than some knives turned against unarmed air crews and passengers, allowing them to turn commercial aircraft into heavy, fuel laden bombs.

We realize now that we are fighting a very different kind of human. These people hold it as a tenet of faith that their deaths will – if they die fighting the infidels – send them directly to heaven.

This Islamic fanaticism may not be a true example of the Muslim faith. But that doesn’t matter, it is what the suicide killers believe. This dramatically changes the discussion of firearms.

If Americans are to live in their own country and feel at all safe, the firearm is again a necessity. Terrorists lived in Boston and flew the jets that got this whole war started. Likely, some live in the area still. These are enemies. They will kill Americans without compunction. To have any chance of survival, Americans have to possess the power to overcome them. Here.

That means firearms, true. It also means some knowledge of who might be foes, and who are not enemies.

Having firearms and using firearms against America’s enemies within America is a far more delicate and dangerous thing than shooting during a robbery or an attempted murder. Those crimes generally involve single attacks on one or two individuals. Generally criminal violence is initiated for personal satisfaction or gain.

Now, however, we are confronted with enemies are trying to kill us simply because we are Americans. And they will happily kill themselves if that is necessary to accomplish their goal.

This war with human bombs is what is different between 1999 and 2002. So cities can win court battles and achieve a measure of greater safety in the manufacture and sale of that most deadly of tools, a firearm. But it is clear, again, that attempts to remove the availability of firearms from law abiding citizens is a mistake.

We should not be trying to take guns away.

Having guns means that there is a risk of some harm to people, and efforts to minimize those possibilities are correct. Not having guns, however, could mean victimization at the hands of fanatics and possibly – one day – slavery. History is clear on that point, and the terrorists have added a new dimension to that fact.

Return to top