Senate Votes to Repeal Capital’s Gun Liability Law

The Senate voted Monday to repeal a District of Columbia law that makes the manufacturers and distributors of many assault weapons liable for deaths and injuries caused by the weapons.

Opponents dropped their fight against the proposed repeal after being told that it would probably die during future House-Senate negotiations.

The Senate approved the provision on a voice vote. In so doing, they voted to overturn a measure enacted in 1990 by local lawmakers in an attempt to stem the violence that has given the capital one of the nation’s highest murder rates.

The move by conservatives to knock down the district’s gun law gained strength after the Senate voted 50 to 32 to allow a vote on the question. The tally made it clear that conservatives and their allies from gun-manufacturing states probably had the votes to overturn the local law.

Conservatives said the district legislation was hurting the nation’s gun manufacturers, who were now reluctant to sell guns that might end up on the city’s streets.

“It threatens to bankrupt legitimate gun manufacturers . . . through lawsuits brought by injured drug dealers,” said Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) “What’s next? Alcohol? Cigarettes? Condoms . . . or perhaps distributors of red meat?”

But liberal opponents said hurting assault weapons sales was exactly the point when local lawmakers wrote the measure.

“They passed it because they can’t think of any other way to keep the guns out of the District,” Sen. Brock Adams (D-Wash.) said.