Posted on 02/04/2003 7:18:20 AM PST by choosetheright
A former senior firearms industry executive said in an affidavit filed in court in San Diego yesterday that gun manufacturers had long known that some of their dealers corruptly sold guns to criminals but pressured one another into remaining silent for fear of legal liability. It is the first time a senior official in the gun industry has broken ranks to challenge practices in the business.
The affidavit, by Robert A. Ricker, a former chief lobbyist and executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council, then the main gun industry trade organization, was filed in California Superior Court in support of claims by 12 California cities and counties suing the gun makers and their wholesalers and retail dealers.
The cities, led by Los Angeles and San Francisco, contend that the gun industry has maintained a distribution system that allows many guns to fall into the hands of criminals and juveniles, creating a public nuisance and violating a California law on unfair business practices.
A copy of Mr. Ricker's declaration, filed under seal, was made available to The New York Times.
Mr. Ricker, a moderate in an industry dominated by hard-liners, lost his post as executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council in 1999 after attending a White House meeting with President Bill Clinton to discuss preventing more school shootings like the one at Columbine High School in Colorado.
The meeting was opposed by the National Rifle Association, and Mr. Ricker said in his affidavit that pressure from the rifle association led the gun industry to disband his organization in favor of the more conservative National Shooting Sports Foundation.
Several lawyers for the gun companies, including Lawrence G. Keane, general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, now the main gun industry trade group, said they had not yet seen Mr. Ricker's affidavit and therefore could not comment.
In their defense, the gun makers have insisted they do not know what happens after the guns leave the factory, since they are sold to wholesalers and in turn to retail dealers.
But Mr. Ricker, who has been working for more than two decades in the gun industry, including a stint as a lawyer for the N.R.A., said the gun makers had long known that "the diversion of firearms from legal channels of commerce to the black market" takes place "principally at the distributor/dealer level."
In a telephone interview from his home in suburban Washington, Mr. Ricker said he had recently served as an expert witness for the gun industry in a related lawsuit, brought by Cincinnati. He said he also still served as a consultant to some gun companies.
But Mr. Ricker said someone in the gun industry needed to speak up about bad dealers because "we've got a bunch of right-wing wackos at the N.R.A. controlling everything."
Left to their own, Mr. Ricker said, many industry executives "would be more than willing to sit down and negotiate a settlement" with the cities about weeding out unscrupulous dealers.
In his affidavit, Mr. Ricker also appeared to undercut another of the gun makers' most common defenses: that because they only sell to federally licensed dealers, they are fully obeying the law and the rest of the job of enforcing the law can be handled by the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.
Mr. Ricker said in the affidavit that the idea that all dealers operate legally because they have a license is a "fiction." He added that "the firearms industry has long known that A.T.F. is hampered" by its shortage of personnel and loopholes in the gun laws. For example, he said, the bureau can inspect a dealer only once a year as a result of a law supported by the rifle association.
Mr. Ricker can't POSSIBLY have an axe to grind here ... nah...
This article also claims the NRA is "a bunch of right-wing wackos." LOL!
You can do the math and see it's impossible for the ATF to inspect all the FFLs in one year. This is the ATF's fault plain and simple. It has nothing to do with the NRA or the firearms industry. The ATF is not doing their job.
I don't disagree, but nobody really wants a bigger or more intrusive ATF.
The "fiction" I was referring to is the articles implication that gun manufacturers have some knowledge of, or control over what FFL dealers and distributors do with the guns they buy.
Individuals are responsible for the guns on the black market - not dealers, not gun shows, and not manufacturers.
Fantastic idea BUMP.
I don't think that's a job the ATF finds real exciting. Examining millions of forms each year at dealers doesn't get the ATF the front page publicity for the congressional show and tells at budget time.
(Utterly horrid movie. Wesley Snipes covers virtually every anti-gun and evil-right-wing stereotype and conspiracy theory possible... every bit of the movie's story takes place in a single block of a city park... and they don't even have the guts to show Linda Fiorentino's nude scene!)
We won't prosecute you if you do this for us. Like a drug dealer getting a "get out of jail free" card for turning other people in.
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