The Cities Take the Initiative: Public Nuisance Lawsuits against Handgun Manufacturers

Abstract

For most of our large cities, armed criminal violence is the most devastating and persistent danger to public health and safety over the past few decades. Much would seem to be at stake: extraordinary levels of loss of life and injury, startling financial costs, and a serious undermining of the quality and tenor of everyday life. Yet it has an aura of regrettable normalcy, a deplorable but inevitable fact of life in urban America. This book chapter challenges the notion that nothing can be done about this with a particular focus: the role of manufacturers and dealers in the handgun market that yields notoriously easy access to handguns by criminals and youth, and the city handgun lawsuits based on the marketing practices of certain manufacturers and dealers, which were conceived by the author.

Keywords: Guns, city lawsuits, public nuisance, gun markets, gun manufacturers