Posted on 03/05/2004 8:29:54 AM PST by kimber
WASHINGTON -- When the Senate voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to kill a bill that would have freed gun manufacturers and distributors from liability in many civil lawsuits, several gun control measures the Senate included also died.
Now, some Democratic senators, including Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, say they intend to try to attach those measures as amendments to other legislation this year.
Lieberman was one of the sponsors of legislation that would require background checks for weapon sales at gun shows.
The Senate voted for it as an amendment to the gun liability bill. It also approved an amendment that would renew the ban on 19 kinds of semi-automatic weapons for 10 more years. Both amendments died when the Republican-drafted civil liability bill was defeated, 90-8, after its backers concluded that the amendments were unacceptable. "I am disappointed that the Senate’s final action ..in defeating the bill will prevent these important, life-protecting amendments from moving forward at this time," Lieberman said after the vote.
But, he added: "I am hopeful that we will see them move forward through other means in the future."
Democratic U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, who sponsored the semi-automatic weapons ban, vowed that she would find ways to include her amendment in other bills moving through the Senate this year.
Many Republicans who initially supported the bill voted against it because they opposed the Democrats’ amendments. They were joined by Democrats who concluded that the gun control amendments would not outweigh problems with the core bill. Connecticut’s Democratic senators were split, with Sen. Chris Dodd voting against the bill and Lieberman voting for it.
"This was a bad bill," Dodd said. "Its aim wasn’t to protect a single person in Connecticut or across the nation from gun violence."
Its aim was to shield the gun industry from lawsuits. That’s wrong."
But Lieberman said that "in the end, I concluded that the harm done by the immunity bill was outweighed by the good done by several amendments."
Gary Mehalik, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which represents the firearm industry, said: "Ninety senators voted down the underlying bill and with it the amendments. ..That says a lot."
President Bush had urged "clean" passage of the bill, free of amendments that called for stricter gun control. White House press secretary Scott McClellan correctly predicted before the vote that the amendments would kill the bill.
Gun opponents cheered the decision, which would keep the gun industry accountable in court, while gun advocates lamented that licensed manufacturers could be held responsible for criminals who use weapons illegally.
Patricia Checko, the director of health for the Bristol-Burlington Health District, said gun companies should be legally responsible for inflicting harm, much like tobacco companies.
"A cigarette is also legal, and yet people who smoke cigarettes and get lung cancer are able to sue the maker of the cigarette. Why would a gun industry say: ‘It’s not my fault. I just make this legal product, and it’s not up to me who gets a hole in them?’"
But Mehalik said that gun companies should not be held financially accountable for crimes committed with guns. It is "way beyond the control of the law-abiding and licensed (gun) industries" if criminals use the weapons to harm others, he said.
He also said it was important to limit expensive lawsuits to prevent employee layoffs."There are thousands of people employed by the firearms industry," he said.
For those that think this is a dead issue. Time to contact your congress critter.
Smoking a cigarette is legal, shooting someone with a gun is not. I'm having a hard time with her analogy.
I don't know how well it would work but we need to give them a dose of their own medicine.
Also, every person in California who had to surrender a gun should sue the anti's for damages... not the legislators but the wacky anti gun nuts.
We need to start hurting them in the pocket book hard. If they want to bankrupt us, let's bankrupt them first.
Mike
Not that I don’t sympathize with your anger at the anti-gun nuts, but legislatures and governors make laws not activist.
The bad part is you can’t sue your representatives or governor for acting against their oaths to uphold the Constitutions of the United States and their State.
Mike
Ain't that the truth.
And legislators pass laws that fly in the face of your constitutional rights.
One of the reasons Lieberman is no longer a contender for higher office. Politicians, there's a lesson there....
There are a couple of remedies for that. Hopefully, congress will make use of the one available to them before the citizenry has to make use of theirs.
There are a couple of remedies for that. Hopefully, congress will make use of the one available to them before the citizenry has to make use of theirs.
What a polite and delicate way of putting it.
Do me a favor and call these RINO's by their true title which is "Communist RINO's".
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