| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : FEBRUARY 1, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
| ||||||||
 | ||||||||
| BOOKS
Firepower for the Antigun Lobby MAKING A KILLING The Business of Guns in America By Tom Diaz New Press 258pp $25 What exquisite timing! Chicago, New Orleans, and Brooklyn, N.Y.--soon to be followed by Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and others--file massive lawsuits against the gun industry. Then a meticulously researched book arrives on the scene. Making a Killing: The Business of Guns in America by former reporter Tom Diaz, now senior policy analyst at the vehemently antigun Violence Policy Center in Washington, is a powerful though loaded indictment of an industry that, in his view, is ''contributing to a public health and safety disaster of epidemic proportions.'' Brooklyn's civil trial against 50 companies, which began on Jan. 4, invokes a new, potentially precedent-setting theory of ''negligent distribution''--deliberately oversupplying a legitimate market to create a pool of weapons for the illegitimate market. The suit filed on Nov. 12 by Chicago, which seeks $433 million in damages, introduced an equally novel charge: that the gun industry causes a ''public nuisance'' by creating excess costs for Chicago's police and fire departments and public hospitals. Most of the other cities are expected simply to fault arms makers for producing an unsafe product and failing to incorporate adequate safety devices. Like the litigants, Diaz believes companies that make guns are as much responsible for the damage they cause as tobacco companies are for lung cancer. And, like arguments suggesting that big tobacco deliberately increased the potency of cigarettes, Making a Killing argues that the U.S. gun industry has ''over the last two decades sought to reverse declining profits by dramatically increasing killing power, rolling out new and more dangerous products.'' These include such semiautomatic pistols as Sturm, Ruger & Co.'s 9-mm P-85, sought after by criminals and police forces alike. ''How much firepower is enough?'' the author asks. This seems a fair point: Even those sympathetic to gunmakers' arguments must share Diaz' discomfort at the presence of semiautomatic weapons in civilian hands. But the arms makers' approach is hardly as sinister as Diaz suggests. After all, what industry beset by increased competition in softening markets does not seek innovation in style, weight, size, capacity, speed, and decoration to boost sales? Contributing to the problem, Diaz asserts, is the protection--even coddling--that the U.S. gun industry received for decades in Washington from Congress, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco & Firearms (ATF), and the National Commission on Product Safety. ''Congress has never subjected this lethal industry to the kind of scrutiny that it has the tobacco industry, the automobile industry, the airline industry, the funeral industry, and the manufacturers and distributors of many other products that threaten the public health and safety,'' he declares. ''Hard as it is to believe, guns and ammunition are free of federal safety and health regulation.'' To this charge, gunmakers offer a telling retort: The Consumer Product Safety Act of l972 originally did cover firearms, they say, until a gun-control group petitioned Congress to ban all ammunition as a hazardous substance. The act's framers objected, and firearms were dropped from coverage. Gun violence is also encouraged by the entertainment media, says Diaz, especially by movies that glorify and promote such weapons as Dirty Harry's Smith & Wesson Model 29 and James Bond's Walther pistol. In addition, Diaz faults the way the gun press and industry organizations pandered to public anxiety--after urban riots and assassinations--in promoting what he calls ''the self-defense mirage.'' And he views as downright wicked the extent to which the industry is luring women and children to shooting sports. Never mind that millions of Americans responsibly and safely enjoy them. ''All guns are lethal,'' says Diaz. Diaz is particularly outraged about gun imports. Foreign gunmakers, irresistibly drawn to what Diaz describes as a wide-open market, shipped 20.5 million guns to the U.S. civilian market between l978 and l996, he reports. That's because ''most, if not all, of the foreign gun manufacturers who export to the U.S. cannot sell their products to civilians at home as they can here. These countries all have stricter gun-control laws than the U.S. and much lower rates of firearms violence.'' Between l991 and l996, Diaz reports, former Iron Curtain countries, desperate for hard currency, shipped more than a half-million handguns to the U.S. And he cites ATF data showing that the number of rifles imported from Russia grew from less than 3,000 in l993 to more than a half-million in l994. These numbers should worry both the authorities and U.S. manufacturers. Mostly, however, Diaz' evidence serves as an indictment of lax import restrictions. Predictably, Diaz presses for greater regulation and control of the industry by the ATF, more legal attacks, more censorship of gun ads, and more coalitions to expose the industry and gun worshippers. Meanwhile, a new national system to check the backgrounds of all prospective gun buyers went into effect on Nov. 30. The National Rifle Assn. calls it ''illegal national registration of gun owners'' and plans to sue. For gun-control advocates like Diaz, one suspects, it doesn't go nearly far enough. BY RESA KING _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
|  |
 | |
RELATED ITEMS PHOTO: Cover, ``Making a Killing'' INTERACT E-Mail to Business Week Online | |||
