NAACP Plans Class-Action Suit Against Gun Makers

Declaring that companies producing firearms “must be as responsible as any other industry,” the president of the NAACP confirmed Monday that the civil rights organization will file suit against manufacturers, distributors and importers of handguns to stop multiple sales of weapons.

“Given this year’s tragic events in Colorado, in Indiana, in Illinois, people of America are crying out for real change,” Kweisi Mfume told applauding delegates at the NAACP’s annual meeting in Manhattan. “The fact that illegal trafficking of firearms disproportionately affects minority communities in this country is indisputable.

“Urban communities have sadly become so accustomed to the prevalence of firearms in their neighborhoods that they are no longer shocked at the sound of gunfire,” he added.

The NAACP’s president, who is also the group’s chief executive officer, said the class-action lawsuit scheduled to be filed in federal district court in Brooklyn this week is intended to force the industry to monitor where handguns are distributed and curtail people from buying large quantities of weapons. The civil rights organization’s lawsuit follows the course already taken by a number of major cities, including Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New Orleans to use the courts to try to reduce gun-related violence.

Mfume said the suit was prompted in part by charges filed against a central Illinois gun dealer who allegedly sold Benjamin Daniel Smith, a white supremacist, two handguns used in a shooting spree over the Fourth of July weekend that killed former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong and Won-Joon Yoon, a South Korean doctoral student at Indiana University. Nine other people were wounded in the attacks, and Smith took his own life.

“The illegal gun dealer was able to sell these handguns to Smith because he had just purchased 65 guns from one retailer,” the NAACP’s president charged. “When 65 guns are sold to one person, something is really wrong.”

“It’s got to end,” Mfume continued. “They [manufacturers] must stop dumping firearms in over-saturated communities and markets, because the obvious result is those guns are not going to legally authorized gun dealers. They are getting in the hands of criminals for criminal use.”

The NAACP will not try to obtain monetary damages from gun manufacturers. Instead, the suit will seek injunctions to force the handgun makers to better monitor where weapons are distributed and limit people making multiple purchases.

The suit will be filed in the same court in Brooklyn where a jury in February found handgun manufacturers responsible for the crimes committed with their weapons. Jurors awarded more than $500,000 in damages to a teenager who was wounded in a 1995 attack.

After a monthlong trial, the jury found 15 handgun manufacturers guilty of negligence in the marketing and sale of their weapons. The jurors also cleared 10 other gun makers of negligence.

“We do not pursue these endeavors for monetary gain, nor do we oppose the constitutional right to bear arms by lawful and responsible firearm owners,” the NAACP’s president stressed. “ . . . As a nation and as a people, we simply cannot wait any longer.”

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People provided crime figures to support its suit.

According to a 1993 National Vital Statistics Report it cited, African American males between the ages of 15 and 24 are almost five times more likely to be injured by firearms than white males in the same age group. Black women in that category are almost four times more likely to be hurt by firearms than white women.

The NAACP said that homicides have been the leading cause of death among young black men for almost 30 years.