Printed in the USA.
The Gottlieb-Tartaro Report
Issue 049
January, 1999
FIRST TOBACCO, NOW GUNS
Borrowing a page from the tactics used against the tobacco industry, anti-gunners are turning to the courts to push the firearms industry out of business.
The top U.S. gun makers are on trial in New York to defend against accusations they marketed firearms to criminals who killed innocent people.
The case, which is the first to go to trial seeking damages from gun companies for alleged negligent advertising and promotion, was filed in 1995 in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn by the families of nine people who were shot to death.
The plaintiffs are expected to claim that gun sellers tried to increase sales by making and marketing guns popular with criminals, and by oversupplying states with looser handgun laws so guns were available for illegal transport to stricter states.
The defendants include Smith & Wesson; Sturm, Ruger & Co.; Colt Manufacturing Co.; Beretta USA; and more than a dozen other handgun makers and distributors.
Many other similar lawsuits are in process; this is just the first one to actually go to trial. Chicago is suing gun makers, distributors and retailers for violations of state public-nuisance laws, and New Orleans has filed a product-liability suit against the industry.
By trying different legal theories in different courts, aptly called the "shotgun" approach," anti-gun lawyers hope to find the ones that show the most promise for later stages in the lawsuit campaign.
JONATHAN LOWY, staff attorney for the Washington-based Center for Prevention of Handgun Violence, stated that this is only the beginning of a long lawsuit campaign designed like the attack on the tobacco industry.
"We are much farther along in a much shorter time than tobacco plaintiffs were in their battle," LOWY said.
The tactic of copying the tobacco lawsuits in going after gun makers is worrisome to gun rights advocates. U.S. tobacco companies last November were pressured by lawsuits into reaching a $206 billion agreement with 46 states to reimburse the costs of treating smoking-related illnesses. Cigarette makers still face suits by individuals.
What are the actual chances that the gun grabbers will win any of these lawsuits?
Juries so far have not been receptive to either negligent marketing or product liability arguments. The G-T Report can find no record that Chicago’s public nuisance theory has ever been tried in a courtroom against more than one gun manufacturer at a time.
That should come as no relief to gun suppliers, however. Courts are notoriously unpredictable, which is why the anti-gun crowd is focusing on them now. We can expect the gun grabbers to lose in most trials, but we can also expect a long campaign of appeals and retrials.
And there is always the chance they will get lucky with a jury.
BRACE YOURSELF FOR NEW ANTI-GUN TV SHOW
When you turn on Court TV this season, watch for the title: Kids, Guns and Blood in Our Streets.
It’s the story of three little girls who each got shot in the head on the streets of Miami by a bullet intended for somebody else.
By boring in on the deaths of three innocent children from "stray bullets" on national television, Florida filmmaker ROB FELDMAN will stir up anti-gun passions despite his denial that the segment is anti-gun. "It’s an anti-gun violence story," he says.
Notice FELDMAN didn’t say it’s an anti-CRIME story. "Anti-gun violence" neatly avoids the criminals who fire the fatal shots and, like a stage magician, misdirects your attention to the guns. That distinction won’t be made clear in the documentary film.
The headline touting the new feature read, "Shot On the Streets of Miami: Miami Filmmaker’s Documentary to Debut Nationally On Court TV."
FELDMAN’s film highlights the shootings of RICKIA ISAAC, age 10; JUDY McCOLLUM, age 9; and KHADIJA LOUIS, age 4.
ISAAC was shot and killed while walking home from a MARTIN LUTHER KING Day parade.
McCOLLUM was shot while playing touch football on the last day of summer vacation.
LOUIS was shot by an Uzi while leaving a grocery store with her mother.
You can imagine the anti-gun sentiment this is going to stir up.
FELDMAN is not just a local filmmaker who wants to highlight his community in crisis, as his publicity seems to indicate. He’s a former executive producer for Court TV and has done one documentary for them already. His work has won Emmy® awards for producing, writing and investigative reporting.
This film is a calculated career move for FELDMAN, not something that came from a "local boy who made good." He’s a pro who goes for the gold.
You can bet this one, Kids, Guns and Blood in Our Streets, is going to get high profile attention from the liberal media.
FELDMAN’s documentary dwells on claims that nearly 60,000 American children have been killed by firearms since 1980, one of those numbers designed to horrify without context or explanation (a huge fraction were suicides).
The film includes dramatic footage of the inner-city shootings of all three girls, as well as in-depth interviews with their families. FELDMAN also shows interviews with emergency room doctors and nurses, ministers including Reverend JEROME STARLING, Miami Mayor ALEX PENELAS and Miami-Dade State Attorney KATHERINE FERNANDEZ RUNDLE, among others, including Urban League President T. WILLARD FAIR and TV/Radio personality NEIL ROGERS.
FELDMAN makes a point that the 75 different gun manufacturers he claims to have contacted refused repeated requests for interviews. (You can see the interview questions from a smiling FELDMAN: "Well, Mr. Gunmaker, how much profit did you make from the killing of little RICKIA? Ten bucks, maybe?")
Notably missing from FELDMAN’s film are interviews with the shooters.
FELDMAN’s lame excuse: "It’s not about the causes of gun violence -- it’s about the effects -- on innocent children like RICKIA, JUDY and KHADIJA."
We get it, ROB.
If you focused on the shooters, you’d just have a crime documentary, not an anti-gun documentary. Crime documentaries are a dime a dozen and don’t make the Emmy® awards so easily. Cheap shot.
OLYMPICS AND GUNS
A new Olympics scandal has erupted after revelations that the Salt Lake City Olympics bid committee spent nearly $10,000 on six Browning shotguns and rifles that went to people associated with the Olympics in the two years before winning the 2002 Winter Games.
According to a copyright story in the Salt Lake Tribune, the firearms and other items — including a shotgun that would retail for close to $3,000 — were bought from July 1993 to May 1995 at approximately wholesale prices.
Browning, based in Mountain Green, Utah, is famed for its over-and-under shotgun and other firearms. Browning was founded by JOHN BROWNING, a Utah resident and legendary gun designer, and the Browning name is known by gun enthusiasts throughout the world.
The company sold three shotguns, three rifles and five cases for $9,394, roughly the wholesale cost, in an effort to support the bid committee.
When the allegations of improper payments and gifts given to members of the International Olympics Committee (IOC) and their relatives came out, DON GOBEL, the president and chief executive of Browning, authorized the disclosure of the sales. At the time he was in Liege, Belgium, the headquarters of Browning’s parent company, FN Group Herstal Belgium.
GOBEL released copies of invoices for the six guns, which were directed to the attention of TOM WELCH, the bid committee’s top executive and the former head of the Salt Lake Organizing Committee (SLOC).
The invoice for the most expensive shotgun, a Browning 425, had instructions to call ROD HAMSON to pick it up. HAMSON, a former employee of the bid committee, is now SLOC’s licensing director.
The invoice was dated May 15, 1995 — one month before Salt Lake City won its bid for the 2002 Winter Olympics.
Whether these very expensive rifles and shotguns were "gifts" or "bribes" will be decided by those investigating alleged bribery by the Olympic bid committee. Half of them were billed after the IOC enacted rules that barred its members from receiving gifts worth more than $50, later raised to $150.
At least one of the shotguns was not a gift to a member of the IOC delegation. That gun — the least expensive in Browning’s Citori line — was sent as a gift to PETTER RONNINGEN, who oversaw the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. The gift simply may have been the bid committee’s way of thanking RONNINGEN, now a consultant to SLOC, for his advice and help.
It is unknown whether the other recipients of these firearms are even allowed to possess them in their own countries, since the list has not yet been released.
All of the Browning guns — except for two shipped to Lillehammer — would have to be picked up, since within the United States firearms can be shipped only to licensed dealers.
Purchasers of firearms must fill out the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Form 4473, which asks, "Are you the actual buyer of the firearm listed on this form? If you answer ‘no’ to this question, the dealer cannot transfer the firearm to you."
The question is intended to prevent transfer of firearms to a person not legally qualified to purchase them. Any IOC official in the U.S. to examine potential Olympics sites was probably not eligible to purchase firearms.
BATF regulations consider aliens legally in the U.S. to be a resident of a State for the purpose of complying with the Gun Control Act only if they have resided in that State for at least 90 days prior to the purchase. Alternatively, the principal officer of an embassy or consulate can authorize legal aliens to purchase firearms with a letter of authorization, which must be attached to the completed Form 4473.
Falsifying a Form 4473 is a felony.
If U.S. citizens have to fill out such Forms, shouldn’t aliens?
The G-T Report is interested in examining the six Form 4473s in question.
NRA PRESIDENT CHARLTON HESTON BATTLING PROSTATE CANCER
CHARLTON HESTON was diagnosed with prostate cancer during his annual checkup and prostate screening last June. Doctors agreed to let HESTON, 75, postpone radiation treatment until after the November election so he could stump for Republican candidates and continue shooting "Town and Country," a comedy also starring WARREN BEATTY, DIANE KEATON and GOLDIE HAWN.
Then HESTON underwent the treatment for six to seven weeks, finishing in December. HESTON said he went to the University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center about 7 a.m. five days a week to receive treatment and then went to work.
HESTON says he is on the road to recovery. "It’s not totally gone but it’s on the path to it. Happily, I seemed to have survived. It’s very good news."
HESTON said he will have another checkup in a few weeks. Doctors indicate he will not require surgery but he may undergo radioactive seed implants. These small seeds hit the prostate with a strong dose of radiation but leave other organs relatively untouched.
HESTON, president of the National Rifle Association, won an Oscar® for "Ben Hur" in 1959. He also starred in films such as "The Ten Commandments," "El Cid," and "Planet of the Apes."
CANADIANS IGNORING GUN LAW
The new federal law requiring registration of newly purchased firearms is meeting nonviolent resistance all over rural Canada.
As an indicator of the depth of resistance, Manitoba’s justice minister ordered local police not to press charges against gun shops that don’t call a toll-free registration number whenever they sell a gun.
Then, gun dealers in Saskatchewan began ignoring the law, too, and are asking their provincial officials to likewise protect them from prosecution.
Dealers complain that the registration system doesn’t work. They will typically find themselves on hold when they call the toll-free line, sometimes for two hours, according to critics.
Gun shop owner DARRYL SCHEMENAUER said that after routinely being put on hold for more than an hour, when he finally gets through, "the people on the other end don’t know what’s going on."
SOUTH AFRICAN FLAMETHROWER DETERS CARJACKERS
Is it a gun? Carjackers might think so. It sends a ball of fire outward from both sides of a car at the driver’s command. It’s certainly a flamethrower.
In crime-plagued South Africa, car owners have a new weapon with which to deter potentially murderous carjackers: the Blaster, an in-car flamethrower.
Carjacking is one of the crimes South Africans fear most, with armed criminals often showing no hesitation to kill for a car.
In a country that experiences more than 13,000 car hijackings each year, the $655 system is attractive. It casts a man-high fireball with no damage to the paint job.
The Blaster has been fitted to 25 South African vehicles since its launch late last year, one a law enforcement car.
Authorities have not declared it to be illegal. South African courts sanction lethal action if they can be convinced that someone acted in self-defense. With all the carjackings in their nation, that probably wouldn’t be hard to do.
Even so, the Blaster wasn’t designed to kill. CHARL FOURIE, inventor of the Blaster, said, "This is definitely non-lethal. A person won’t just stand there and let you roast him. My personal feeling is that it would definitely blind a person. He will never see again."
THE AMERICAN MEDICAL ASSOCIATION’S NEWEST ANTI-GUN CRUSADE
Last month’s issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) included yet another anti-gun "study," this one recommending that laws barring felons from buying guns should be expanded to buyers who have committed misdemeanors.
The study, by leading anti-gun advocate GAREN J. WINTEMUTE, MD or the University of California at Davis, and four others, concluded that handgun purchasers with prior misdemeanor convictions are at a higher risk for future criminal activity than handgun purchasers without prior misdemeanor convictions.
The study found that about half of those who had misdemeanor convictions and subsequently bought guns were later charged with new crimes, compared to only about 10 percent without a previous criminal history.
WINTEMUTE’s JAMA piece was accompanied by an editorial from SARAH BRADY and Dr. THOMAS B. COLE of JAMA’s editorial staff recommending that private transfers of guns be regulated the same as those from a dealer and to extend the Brady Act’s now-expired waiting period.
The WINTEMUTE study was funded by a grant from the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCPIC) and the anti-gun California Wellness Foundation. WINTEMUTE was the logical choice for such a study since he is famed for always concluding that more gun laws are the solution.
The WINTEMUTE study’s scientific value is virtually nil despite its highly political punch.
First, it is a "Johnny-One-Note" study only for the state of California, but touted as if it were nationally significant.
Then, it is a retrospective (backward-looking) study, a type that can go into the past and find anything it looks for as long as it ignores conflicting data.
Worse, it is based only on stale data (from 1977 state handgun purchase records - 20 years old!) so that it totally disregards the effect of later gun laws.
Then the study deliberately eliminates gun purchases by men over 50 years old because they don’t commit many crimes.
Is that rigged?
This is junk science at its worst.
Using the same methods, you could prove that the real problem was eating potatoes because most of those charged with new crimes had ingested potatoes in some form within twenty-four hours prior to the new arrest. The real solution is therefore stricter potato control laws. And the WINTEMUTE study is just as laughable.
As Dr. EDGAR A. SUTER, chairman of Doctors for Integrity in Policy Research (DIPR), remarked, "The individuals involved with this [study] want to make guns look as bad as they can." Calling the study "politically skewed," SUTER dismissed it as without merit. DIPR is a nonprofit group that works to expose the anti-gun bias prevalent in medical journals.
Gun owners have serious problems with the recommendation to extending the ban on gun purchasers from misdemeanants. First, it’s felony convictions that cause the loss of rights, not misdemeanor convictions, a point much raised during the debate over the Lautenberg misdemeanor crime of domestic violence as a bar to gun ownership.
Second, it could violate the principle of ex post facto by retroactively increasing the punishment for a crime. This is particularly unfair to those who chose to plead to a misdemeanor because it saved lawyer fees and trial time and didn’t mean a loss of gun rights at the time of the plea.
If such penalties for misdemeanors were to be enacted, courts would clog with low level cases as the accused fought back to defend their gun rights. Such high penalties would defeat the whole purpose of having misdemeanor charges and essentially turn every crime into a felony.
INSTANT CHECK SYSTEM HAS STUBBORN DELAYS
The FBI’s new National Instant Check System (NICS) is delaying many more sales than expected and some dealers say it is causing special problems for customers with common names, especially Hispanics.
BILL CARTER, president of the Texas Gun Dealers Association, which represents 300 of the state’s biggest gun dealers, said, "What we’re finding is that Hispanic names and common names always seem to get delayed. We talked with most of our larger dealers, and everybody is experiencing basically the same thing."
WAYNE WHITMORE, president of Double Action Arms Inc. in Las Cruces, New Mexico, said all of his delayed sales, except one, have been for Hispanic customers. "And that one was a police officer."
RICHARD KELLER, manager of the FBI’s instant check system, said, "We haven’t designed the system to have a prejudice against anybody."
VARIED REACTIONS TO THE NEW INSTANT CHECK SYSTEM
The Libertarian Party has demanded that the new NICS system be abolished immediately before any innocent Americans are robbed, raped, or murdered while waiting to buy a firearm.
The demand came after the FBI admitted that because of telephone and computer glitches, 34% of all gun buyers -- or 1,688 people -- were unable to buy a gun on one day alone in early December, 1998.
Noting that a recent Justice Department survey of convicted criminals found that 93% had acquired their guns illegally, the Libertarian Party complained that the instant checks only benefitted criminals who don’t take them.
President BILL CLINTON, on the other hand, touted the system as stopping 400 criminals and other prohibited purchasers from buying guns in the first four days the new system was used.
In a weekly radio address, the President also said that he will push Congress this year to pass a new waiting period before handgun sales become final.
"This cooling-off period will help prevent rash acts of violence and give authorities more time to stop illegal gun purchasers," CLINTON said.
He said he will also seek legislation to ban juveniles convicted of violent crimes from owning guns for life, instead of disregarding such criminal records when they turn 21.
CALIFORNIA’S LOCAL BAN ON "SATURDAY NIGHT SPECIALS" STANDS
A legal challenge by the National Rifle Association to West Hollywood’s ordinance banning the sale of the cheap handguns known as "Saturday Night Specials" was recently turned away by the California State Supreme Court.
Even though the action is not a ruling by the high court itself, it upholds an appeals-court ruling in favor of the ordinance.
The 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled last September that the ordinance was within the power of local governments to regulate businesses and protect their residents -- just a day after then-Gov. Pete Wilson vetoed a statewide measure banning the guns.
The high court’s unanimous denial of review means that California law now recognizes that local governments have the power to ban certain types of handguns despite a pre-emption law giving such power only to the state.
Gun control advocates were jubilant, noting that about 40 cities and counties have laws like the 1996 West Hollywood ordinance, which bans the sale but not possession of the handguns.
CHUCK MICHEL, lawyer for the NRA and the California Rifle and Pistol Association, said the high court would eventually have to address the issue. Bans will still be contested on several grounds, he said.
For example, MICHEL said, gun manufacturers will argue in a pending Superior Court suit that a Sacramento ban discriminates irrationally against the makers of guns that are no more dangerous than legal guns.
BOSTON POLICE TO USE GUN LOCKS
Boston has become the first major city to make gun locks standard equipment for police officers’ guns when they are at home.
Boston Police Department spokeswoman Sgt. MARGOT HILL said the 2,247 officers on the force will set the example for the public to comply with a new state law requiring gun owners to use safety locks or place their guns in locked containers. Violators can be fined up to $10,000 and imprisoned for up to 10 years.
Police weapons were exempt from the law, but Boston PD policy will require officers to use them when they are at home.
The gun locks, manufactured by SafTLok of Tequesta, Florida, sell for $80 each. They are being donated by two nonprofit organizations, the Boston Police Foundation and Stop Handgun Violence Inc.
COLT’S PRESIDENT TALKS ABOUT SMART GUNS
STEVEN SLIWA, Colt Manufacturing Company Chief Executive Officer, recently told a medical conference that so-called "smart guns" may be available to police next year.
SLIWA told his audience that a police prototype smart gun being developed by Colt has a radio transponder built into the weapon that allows the gun to fire only when close to another radio transponder sending the right code. The other transponder is in a ring or wristwatch worn by the owner.
If the officer’s gun is taken away, said SLIWA, the weapon’s transponder will not be in correct alignment to get the signal that unlocks a blocking pin on the weapon and it won’t fire.
SLIWA spoke at an event sponsored by the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Firearm Injury Center, a distinctly anti-gun venue.
SLIWA is a former president of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida who took over as Colt chief executive last August.
The workability of the smart gun was not assessed. SLIWA noted that mass-produced smart guns using fingerprints or skin conductivity to recognize the owners could follow a police prototype within two or three years.
Colt is one of only a handful of firearms manufacturers conducting research into smart gun technology. So far, the federal government has provided about half a million dollars for such research.
SLIWA emphasized that smart guns are not the solution for everyone, and moves to require them are misguided.
Educating children and others about gun safety, SLIWA said, is the biggest factor in reducing firearm injuries. His personal preference, he said, would be to manufacture a gun that expired every year, requiring the owner to come in for retraining.
Skeptics are concerned that smart guns will always be subject to failure and place innocent lives in danger by not firing when needed.
THIS PARTING SHOT REALLY IS A SHOT
The old man fired the handgun.
The two teenagers who had attacked 81-year-old BRUNO KOSINSKI were stunned.
One of them was not only stunned, but also had a new piercing, this one by a .38-caliber bullet through the neck.
The two young thugs spotted KOSINSKI in front of his house as an easy mark for a robbery. He is a frail man with thinning white hair who shuffles his feet as he walks slightly hunched over. He was getting in his car in a Chicago neighborhood when he felt the pepper spray wet in his face. The teen punks pushed him to the ground, took his wallet and, not yet satisfied, threatened to kill him.
The 5-foot-5 elderly gent then did the only reasonable thing for a person in his position: he reached in his pants pocket, pulled out his handgun and shot the young man who threatened to kill him.
A female suspect fled the corner of Leavitt and Rice Streets but was caught a few blocks away, police said.
When the cops got there, KOSINSKI admitted he illegally carried a concealed handgun. Chicago and Illinois have banned handguns. KOSINKSI was totally unapologetic.
KOSINKSI said, "I don’t feel at all sorry that it happened," speaking softly and slowly at his West Side auto-parts store. "The least that I could do was defend myself."
He was not charged with the shooting or with carrying a concealed weapon because he was defending himself, police said.
Police spokeswoman PAT CAMDEN said that although KOSINKSI was in violation of city and state law, he won’t be charged. "This is a victim of a robbery in front of his house. He had a registered weapon and used it to defend himself against these gangbangers," CAMDEN said.
Last year in Chicago, according to the latest police figures, nearly 5,500 people were charged with carrying a concealed gun, a misdemeanor that carries a maximum one-year jail term.
KOSINSKI was the second elderly man in two weeks who, fearing for his life, shot a robbery suspect. A 78-year-old man who fatally shot a suspect last November also was not charged for carrying a handgun in the city, authorities said.
Why didn’t the police charge these two elderly illegal shooters?
Gary Kleck, a Florida State University professor, said a 1994 study indicates that those people who are more likely to carry and use handguns for protection are between the ages of 18 and 45, but authorities are reluctant to charge the elderly because they privately cheer for them for fighting back against overwhelming odds.
KLECK said, "If he was a 20-year-old black kid, I suspect they would have charged him. To the police, the elderly are sympathetic victims."
The police department denied KOSINSKI was treated any differently than anybody else would have been under the circumstances.
The Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to discuss the case. Spokesman BOB BENJAMIN said it was up to the police to decide whether to charge KOSINSKI with a misdemeanor for carrying a hidden handgun.
The two thugs, however, were charged. They turned out to be KOSINSKI’s next-door neighbors, but he’d never seen them before. The recipient of the bullet, JOSE VALDEZ, 19, was in fair condition at Cook County Hospital and BRANDY FITZA, 17, was being held in the police lockup. They were both charged with armed robbery and battery.
What’s the hook in this story?
KOSINSKI is a retired sheriff’s deputy who worked 10 years at the jail.
Could that have had anything to do with him not being charged?
You be the judge.
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