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Posted on 06/12/2002 3:32:58 PM PDT by Pern
They make unlikely combatants, a grieving immigrant mother from Queens and a second-generation West Coast mogul who boasts of providing "millions of firearms" to lower-income groups.
But Joan Truman Smith — a persistent voice for justice in the murder of her daughter Anita Smith in the Wendy's massacre two years ago — is taking on the man she says also played a role in the stunning crime.
She has filed a federal lawsuit against Bruce Jennings, whose family holds an empire built on the manufacture of small-caliber Saturday night specials, as well as the sale of cheap .38-caliber and 9-mm. pistols that are used in hundreds of crimes in New York every year.
Anita Smith was one of five Wendy's workers who were methodically executed during a robbery May 24, 2000, allegedly by two men who used a Bryco/Jennings Model J-38 .38-caliber semiautomatic pistol, serial No. 1032592.
"These guns, especially this type of gun, go to a lot of criminal hands," Truman Smith said. "The manufacturer doesn't care about lives, just money."
Also named in the suit before Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn Federal Court are Jennings' distribution company and the Ohio-based wholesaler, Acusport, and retailer, Atlantic Gun and Tackle store, which bought and resold the gun before it was stolen and taken to New York.
The suit contends that Jennings' companies saturate the market through high-volume outlets that encourage sales to traffickers, and that their products are used in crimes disproportionately to other brands of firearms.
"Each entity in the distribution chain of the Wendy's gun has a bad history," said Elisa Barnes, the lawyer representing Truman Smith. "Thousands of crime guns have been traced to the wholesaler and the store, and the gun was sold to a straw purchaser."
Jennings once told PBS' "Frontline" his family had sold "upwards of 10 million guns."
Over the years, the gun trade has furnished him with plush homes in California and Nevada, a private plane and luxury cars.
"We have supplied millions of firearms legitimately to the vast population of the lower-income groups. And by supplying these firearms at affordable prices, we've filled the void that the other American manufacturers had failed to do so for many years," Jennings told "Frontline."
"They're making the guns to bring into our neighborhoods to kill us," Truman Smith said. "They're not making guns for black people, poor people; they're making them for money."
Jennings' lawyer said through an assistant that he would not comment on the lawsuit.
Gunning for Profits
The Jennings clan has long been the scourge of gun-control advocates, and their products the bane of urban cops.
"Bruce Jennings is kind of a prototypical gun manufacturer," said Dennis Henigan, legal director of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "He's essentially shown no regard whatsoever for how his guns are used."
Jennings' late father, George, founded now-defunct Raven Arms, which churned out small, easily concealed .25-caliber pistols selling for $50 to $75 and filled a void left by a 1968 federal law prohibiting shoddy imported guns.
Jennings started his own company, Bryco Arms, and later started B.L. Jennings Inc., a wholesale business that bought and resold the Bryco guns. The family's other sister companies — Davis, Lorcin, Phoenix Arms — are dubbed the "Ring of Fire" companies because they were located on a volcano belt in California.
Jennings does not hold an active federal firearms license in his name. Bryco and B.L. Jennings Inc. have active licenses, but when asked for the names of the responsible persons on the licenses, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms spokesman Joseph Green said they are not public record.
Barnes contends that Jennings — who is ineligible to hold an active license because of a domestic violence conviction — still controls the companies through shell corporations in his children's names.
In 1993, according to ATF, Bryco Arms produced 251,633 handguns. In 1997, that had dropped to 47,688, but it has been climbing back up. In 2000, Bryco manufactured 116,664 pistols, the bulk of them .38-caliber and 9-mm. firearms, which sell much more cheaply than their rivals. Similar caliber weapons by SigSauer, for example, sell in stores for $600 to $700.
The Wendy's gun cost $169.95 in the store and was resold for $250, but a weapon like that normally fetches $500 on the street, ATF agents said.
The profit potential increases the chances the weapon will enter the illegal market and be used in a crime.
Last year, five of the top 10 crime guns were made by Ring of Fire companies. Of 5,972 crime guns submitted for tracing to ATF's New York office, 534 were Bryco .38-caliber and 9-mm. weapons and 863 were pistols made by Lorcin, Raven and Davis.
They are the weapons of choice for criminals ages 17 to 24, ATF figures show. And among that age group, Bryco semiautomatics have the fastest "time to crime," being recovered in a crime within three years of legitimate sale.
It took 14 months until the Wendy's gun was used on Anita Smith and her co-workers.
A Family in Tears
"If I'm crying, that's how it's going to be," Truman Smith warns a visitor in her West Indian accent, frequently wiping tears as she speaks of her daughter, who was 22 and due to start courses at York College in September 2000.
Truman Smith hugs her two sons, Michael Smith, 13, and Shakeem Smith, 8, close as she talks. Michael wrote a poem about the family that says in part: "Some times we cry. We can laff, we can be sad, our tears can not lie."
Truman Smith's surviving daughter, Michelle Smith, 22, "doesn't like to talk about it; they were very close," her mother said.
Truman Smith has vowed she'll be in court for as long as it takes to see defendant John Taylor convicted of capital murder. Craig Godineaux pleaded guilty and got life.
"I was against the death penalty, until it was at my front door," she said. "My child was begging for her life."
The murder weapon remains locked away in the Queens district attorney's office, awaiting Taylor's trial in September. Truman Smith has never seen it but decided she wanted to hold its manufacturer responsible.
"The law's got to change, how these guns get into people's hands got to change; there has to be change in the community," she said.
Verdict Overturned
Barnes brought a case three years ago against the country's major handgun manufacturers, Hamilton vs. Accu-tek et al., and a Brooklyn Federal Court jury found that 15 defendants marketed or distributed handguns negligently.
The state Court of Appeals overturned the decision, saying manufacturers don't have a duty to make sure the guns don't reach criminal hands.
Andrew Arulanandam, a spokesman for the National Rifle Association, would not comment on Truman Smith's suit but said, "These are careless lawsuits aimed at bankrupting a legitimate American industry by holding them responsible for the criminal actions of others."
But Henigan said manufacturers can be held liable for how the guns are sold because they also restrict dealers regarding prices and display of their products.
"Cases that were dismissed on pleadings 10 or 15 years ago are now going much further in the courts," Henigan said. "The law is developing."
Joshua Horwitz of the Educational Fund to Stop Handgun Violence said Truman Smith's case satisfies what was lacking in the Hamilton case — identification of the gun and the whole supply chain — and "has a lot of potential."
Truman Smith sees the case in simpler terms.
"Take this picture, show it to the gun manufacturer," she said, holding a photograph of Anita Smith.
Her daughter is in a cream-colored coffin, her lustrous black hair over one shoulder, a red-tinged yellow rose resting on the other.
Now that's the pot calling the kettle black.
I wonder what would happen if the Jennings were to solicit photos and stories of people who defended themselves with the affordable handguns they sell?
Then anger, followed by despair.
And finally the sort of brain-rotting madness that leaves just enough of her mind intact so that she can fully experience suffering without reprieve.
Oh yes...
I wish her a long, long life as well.
If she and her family had exercised their right to keep and bear arms, they would not have been victimized by a criminal who they are now willing to execute. They could have fought back. She is to blame for the helplessness of her family.
Nor any OTHER kind of loophole. Note that the guns are sold legitimately at retail, then STOLEN before 'street' resale.
Better doorlocks, anyone?
I detest brainless twits.
Pro Life, Pro Death Penalty and PRO SECOND AMENDMENT.
If this is the standard, holding the manufacturer of the hole punch liable for the things it punches holes in then what's next?
You cut your hand off with a circular saw and have a basis to sue? You sue the pencil manufacturer for your bad handwriting? You sue pontiac for your speeding tickets?
If it's working as designed than I can see no basis for a suit..
For me, it is not as much a matter of living to see another day as it is that I just couldn't live with myself if I let one of these idiots kill me.
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