OUTGUNNED

How efforts to curb America’s “Great Gun Bazaar” have foundered on the lobbying shoals of the National Rifle Association and kindred gun-rights organizations.

Since legislators can’t confront the issue of handgun proliferation and misuse—bills never even get out of committee—couldn’t litigation do the job? Abel’s law firm, Wendell Gauthier, tried to demand culpability on the part of weapon makers as it did successfully with the tobacco industry. Their suit seemed modest, requiring waiting periods, limiting to one the number of guns that could be bought within a 30-day period, advocating the development of smart guns that could be used only by their owner. Forget it. When the NRA gets rolling, explain Abel and investigative journalist Brown, they wield outsized political clout for their three million members: dealing with largesse, playing hard on the sacredness of individual rights, convincing the courts that gun control is a legislative issue. The authors detail the schism that almost allowed some control to emerge: The NRA is a consumerist organization that thrives on crisis and perceived threats to rights, while the gun makers are businesspeople who want to be left alone. Smith & Wesson, hoping to be exempted from lawsuits, agreed to a “Code of Conduct” and were instantly pilloried by the NRA, boycotted, and left holding a very lonely, wind-blown position. Throughout, Brown and Abel stipple their legal and political tale with recountings of horrific killings, including the deaths of youngsters and plenty of hate murders—recurring phenomena that should be more than enough to stack the scales of justice on the side of some form of gun control. Still, only eight weeks after the Columbine shootings, the NRA had thwarted any gun-control legislation that might have come out of Congress. Wendell Gauthier hasn’t fared any better.

A dispiriting situation, one that will bring only more misery, Brown and Abel foretell, before all the gun-distribution loopholes are closed.