HAHN FOR MAYOR
18553 Ventura Blvd.
Tarzana, CA 91356

Stop Gun Violence; We Must Change Way Firearms Are Designed And Distributed In U.S.

OCTOBER 10, 1999
OP-ED BY JIM HAHN

FEW images convey the terror of gun violence more than the scene of children being led away from the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills following the shooting in August.

Despite the tragedy there and the uproar over gun violence that followed both this incident and that at Columbine High School, the horrible impact of guns goes on unabated.

Every day in California 11 people die from handgun violence. Gun shots are the leading cause of death among young people.

Nationwide, more than 30,000 people were killed and 100,000 injured by guns in 1997.

In the city of Los Angeles, more than 400 residents were killed by firearms last year.

Gun violence exacts an immeasurable toll on victims, their families and their communities.

In addition to the human costs, gun violence imposes a vast financial burden on society. According to a recent study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, medical treatment nationwide of gun violence in 1996 resulted in a staggering total cost of $ 2.3 billion, nearly half borne by taxpayers.

The national epidemic of gun violence must end.

In May, I filed a lawsuit under California's consumer protection and public nuisance laws against gun manufacturers, distributors and dealers to compel them to change the way they do business.

The city's lawsuit, based on California law, differs substantially from the product liability, negligence and public nuisance claims rejected last week by an Ohio state court filed by the city of Cincinnati against the gun industry.

Los Angeles was joined in this lawsuit by Compton, Inglewood and West Hollywood.

San Francisco, joined by several Northern California cities, and most recently, Los Angeles County, also filed suit against the gun industry.

In short, nearly half of the lawsuits filed nationwide against the gun industry have been brought by California cities and counties.

These lawsuits are the culmination of a statewide task force I formed and co-chair with San Francisco's city attorney to develop the strongest possible legal theories for confronting the gun industry.

By this lawsuit we intend to fundamentally change the way handguns are designed and distributed in order to make guns safer and less readily available to criminals.

I and representatives of several other jurisdictions recently met with the gun industry to explore whether these goals can be achieved without the time and expense of a lawsuit.

While these talks may prove fruitful we are also aggressively advancing the litigation.

Among the basic safety features the lawsuit seeks is increasing a guns' trigger resistance so that a child cannot fire one. As far back as a century ago and up until the 1940s, guns were made with this level of trigger resistance.

It's time to put it back.

Guns should also uniformly contain a device preventing a pistol from firing when its magazine is removed, which according to one gun manufacturer would only cost between 9 cents and $ 2 to install, and an indicator letting a gun's operator know that a bullet is in the gun's chamber, which is estimated to only cost 25 cents to install.

Such low-cost devices could prevent 23 percent of all accidental shootings nationwide.

The lawsuit also seeks to require the gun industry to implement technology so that a gun can only be operated by its lawful owner, through such features as a personalized magnetic ring or through fingerprint activation.

Such technology would mean that a police officer could not be shot when the officer's service handgun is grabbed in a struggle, which leads to nearly 12 fatal shootings a year.

It would also bar teen-agers from using their parents' gun. And it would prevent criminals from using handguns bought on the black market.

These improvements in gun safety features are critical given that in the first six months of this year, more than 100,000 handguns were purchased in California, adding to the 65 million handguns possessed nationwide.

The technology for such handguns has been under development for years yet the industry has refused to bring it to market. The goal of our lawsuit is to compel the industry to do so. Changes in the design of guns must also be coupled with changes in how guns are sold. By selling through distributors who in turn sell to retailers, gun manufacturers have disavowed any responsibility for how easy it is for criminals to gain access to guns.

Gun retailers are not screened by manufacturers; they undergo no training; and they have no manufacturer supervision over sales.

Indeed, a fast-food franchise has more rigorous supervision than does a gun retailer.

As a consequence, gun wholesalers and retailers may sell to gun shows where no background checks are required, and to ''kitchen-table'' dealers who sell guns from the trunks of their cars or their homes in violation of local zoning laws.

These kitchen-table dealers are much more likely to sell to prohibited purchasers such as felons.

The city's lawsuit seeks to end these practices and require manufacturers to properly oversee the distribution and sale of their products.

Lawsuits by municipalities aimed at holding the gun industry accountable for accidental and criminal use of their product is a new area of the law.

Yet, courts recently have started recognizing that gun manufacturers bear responsibility for how their product is used. Last week, the California Court of Appeals ruled that a gun manufacturer can be held criminally liable in the 1993 fatal shooting at a San Francisco law firm, representing the first appellate court in the country to so rule.

This ruling follows a New York jury's decision in February holding several gun manufacturers responsible for the criminal use of a handgun. L.A.'s lawsuit is not about taking people's guns away. Instead, it's about making the guns that people lawfully own safer. And it's about curtailing the easy access of criminals to guns.

In California we enjoy some of the strongest state criminal laws for the use of a weapon.

But in some areas of gun safety and gun sales, efforts to pass significant legislation have failed under the weight of gun industry opposition. With litigation, we now have an additional tool for assuring that we don't again read about another gun tragedy in our midst.