BENTON - Limits in federal law on civil liability of gun makers and dealers for crimes shouldn’t interfere with expansion of their civil liability in Illinois, private groups argued as friends of U.S. District Court on Oct. 23.
Everytown for Gun Safety, Brady Center to Prevent Violence, and Giffords Law Center opposed an injunction against a Firearm Industry Responsibility Act that Gov. J.B. Pritzker signed in August.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation petitioned for the injunction, seeking protection under the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
Bhavani Raveendran of Chicago, who in March filed a brief backing the ban on what the state defines as assault weapons, filed the current brief.
She claimed legislators enacted the industry responsibility law “against the backdrop of a gun violence epidemic in Illinois.”
Crime statistics suggest her gun violence claims were exaggerated.
Crime tables on the Disaster Center website show violence of all kinds steadily diminished in Illinois for 25 years, until the lockdown.
Tables show 22,476 murders from 1980 to 1999 and 17,766 from 2000 to 2019.
Raveendran wrote that about 1,622 Illinois residents die each year from gun violence and 2,715 are wounded.
She attributed these figures to Everytown’s website, which notes that 36% of the deaths were suicides.
It also states that Illinois ranks 35th in the rate of gun deaths.
Raveendran claimed gun violence in Illinois costs about $19 billion a year, a figure she attributed to Everytown’s website.
“Bad actors in the gun industry can and do enable gun violence,” she wrote.
She wrote that industry actors are aware of reasonable practices and controls that minimize the risk that they will supply criminals and other high risk buyers.
Raveendran cited research from 2012, finding sales to buyers who purchase for others represented a widely recognized means of diversion into an illicit market.
She cited research from 2005 and 2006, finding a small minority of dealers facilitated considerable diversion at the retail stage or soon after.
She also cited research from 2007, finding corrupt dealers sell weapons off the books and sell them in high volume to a single buyer.
Raveendran wrote that traces of guns Chicago police seized from 2013 to 2016 showed the primary sources were dealers in Chicago suburbs and Indiana.
She wrote that the state’s law bases liability on misconduct in the industry and not on the harm criminals cause.
She added that the federal law doesn’t offer total immunity, and it expressly contemplates state regulation of the industry.
Raveendran wrote that some civil claims against industry members fall outside the scope of the federal law.
She argued that Congress carved out exceptions in the law, and one provides that it doesn’t bar an action in which a defendant knowingly violated a statute.
Plaintiffs “across the country” have relied on the exceptions to successfully assert civil liability claims against industry defendants, she wrote.
Raveendran cited six decisions from 2012 to 2020, four from New York and one each from Connecticut and Maryland.
She wrote that even if the federal law required dismissal of some claims under the state law, “that is no reason to discard the entire statute.”
She argued that Congress intended to limit judicial expansion of liability standards while preserving state legislative power to regulate the industry.
She wrote that an industry member who knows of reasonable precautions to reduce straw purchases, unlawful misuse, or inventory theft but fails to implement them would likely violate a standard of reasonable conduct.
The brief states that if a defendant knowingly violates gun laws and such conduct causes harm, nothing in the federal law would bar enforcement of the state law.
Raveendran argued that the National Shooting Sports Foundation didn’t explain why a dealer who ignores obvious signs of an acute mental health crisis couldn’t be held accountable under the state law.
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg founded Everytown.
The other groups bear the names of former presidential press secretary James Brady and former U.S. Rep. Gabby Giffords, victims of gun violence.
District Judge Staci Yandle presides.
Raveendran practices at Romanucci and Blandin.
Her brief in the assault weapon case argued that the Fourteenth Amendment amended the meaning of the Second Amendment.
District Judge Stephen McGlynn entered an injunction against the state in that case and Seventh Circuit appellate judges continue their review of his decision.