MR. REED: Mr. President, I call up amendment numbered 1642. I ask the Presiding Officer to let me know when I have reached 10 minutes. My amendment has an overarching purpose, to preserve the right of an individual to sue for negligence when they have been harmed and when that negligence can be fairly attributed to a gun manufacturer, gun dealer, or a gun trade association. It does not depart from the principles of the law. In fact, it braces the fundamental principle of the law which says if someone owes you a duty of care and violates that duty and you have been harmed, you have a right to go into court. The legislation before the Senate not only sweeps away the rights of individuals but sweeps away the rights of municipalities, counties, and other government entities. This is one of the major reasons the advocates have been talking about in this legislation. They have said there has been a rash of suits by municipalities, not about recovering damages, but about undercutting and undermining the gun industry. I am reluctant to change what I think is well-settled law and well-settled practice, but if we are confronted with this legislation, I propose we step back and perhaps reluctantly eliminate suits by municipalities, but for goodness sakes, we can have and maintain suits by individuals. The reason this legislation is before the Senate is because they claim there is a crisis. But if you look at the financial reports of these companies--of Smith & Wesson and Sturm, Ruger--there is no crisis. The financial report of Smith & Wesson indicates they are actually reducing the amount of their reserve to cover these types of suits, which is a strong indication, because it is real dollars, that this threat is dissipating. It is not becoming more enhanced. This crisis is manufactured. And it is, indeed, evaporating. This suit will deny ordinary people, our constituents, their voice before the courts when they have been harmed. No one is going out and getting shot so they can bring a lawsuit. That is preposterous. They are being shot because people have been either criminal or negligent or both. We have criminal laws to deal with criminals, but we have a well-established body of civil practice which allowed an individual to go in and be compensated, receive damages for the harm they have suffered. This legislation, the underlying legislation, would bar the door to courthouses for real people. Who are some of these real people? We all know about the most notorious incidents in the last several years, the Washington, DC snipers. If this legislation passed in the last Congress, and it was on the verge of passing, these people would have been denied their day in court. Ted Franklin is the husband of Linda Franklin, a resident of Arlington, VA. On October 14, 2002, Linda Franklin was a 47-year-old analyst for the FBI. She had two children and a loving husband. She, like so many of us do, was in the parking lot of Home Depot loading up purchases for their new home when she was killed by the sniper. How did the sniper get his weapon? Well, a teenaged boy walked into a gun shop in Washington State and apparently shoplifted a 3-foot-long assault weapon. The manager did not know about it and he did not know where over 200 weapons were. That is gross negligence, certainly, the kind of fact that would get you before a court. She was killed. A 47-year-old, dependable worker of the FBI. Margaret Walekar is the wife of Premkumar, who was shot at the age of 54 while he was refueling his cab at a gas station. Tonight, as you fill up your automobile at a gas station, just think, someone else was doing that and innocently was killed and the heart of the causation of that tragic event was the negligence. After this legislation passes, if it does, that negligent gun dealer and that negligent manufacturer who contributed the weapons would not be held liable for the death of this man. Carlos Cruz is the husband of Sarah Ramos. They had one son, age 7. She was 34 and was sitting on a bench in front of a post office on October 3, 2003, waiting for a ride to take her to her baby-sitting job when she was shot and killed by the Bushmaster assault weapon shoplifted from that negligent gun dealer in Washington State. I could go on and on and on. These are innocent victims. These are our neighbors. These are our constituents. These are the people we will tell, unless we adopt the Reed amendment, you have no value in the eyes of the court. You have no voice in that court. You are not important. Who is important? The National Rifle Association. The gun lobby. The gun dealers. They are important. But these good people are not important. At a minimum, we have to allow the tort law of the various States that has been worked out to be operative for these individuals. Certain States, very few, have restricted--again at the behest of the gun lobby--certain activities. I don't object to that. But that is more the normal course of activity since tort law is the province typically of the State. But no State is going as far as this legislation. No State is going to the extent of practically barring all claims. Now the proponents will stand up and say, no, no, wait, we have exceptions. These exceptions have been carefully crafted to prevent the very cases I have spoken about and we have spoken about from getting to court. These are the real cases. This is what happens. People buy guns through straw purchases. That activity is virtually totally immunized by this legislation. As a result, we are going to see, I think, more reckless behavior. We have already identified through the reporting system of the ATF and other gun shops across this country that have records and are supplying hundreds of guns to crime scenes, some within a short period of time. A weapon is purchased and a few days later found at a crime scene. If they are behaving that way now under the cloud of potential litigation, what will they do when they feel totally immunized, free, uninhibited, to be grossly negligent? The result, of course, is not some academic statistics. The result is people such as Linda Franklin. I note that a few moments ago, in Senatorial time, we took a vote on legislation that would at least have given children the ability to use the existing tort laws of their State without the conditions and encumbrances of this legislation. That provision by Senator Lautenberg was struck down. That amendment failed. What about the case with respect to the Washington sniper where Iran Brown, a 13-year-old boy, was walking to class? All of us who were here vividly remember watching the television set, vividly remember seeing the reports of a young boy walking to the Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Lanham, MD, and being shot by a sniper. The fear that grasped everyone here, parents particularly, that their child could be the next victim, that their school could be the next target, was palpable. He was rushed to a nearby medical center. Thank goodness, after a month in critical condition he survived. What if he had been critically injured or paralyzed? Who was going to pay for that young child's life and recovery if he could not allege that the negligence of the gun dealer contributed to his injury? That is the reality. This legislation is actually modeled on the legislation adopted by the State of Idaho. Certainly that is a State that is proud of its tradition of recreational shooting and hunting. This State adopted this legislation. They recognized the problem and they took exactly the same steps we have taken. If municipalities and public interest groups are going after the gun dealers or gun manufacturers because they want to make a political point, we are not going to allow victims in Idaho who have been shot to be able to raise their voice in court? Texas has a similar statute. They put restrictions upon municipalities, they put restrictions upon groups that might take political suits, and we have heard about those suits, but they have let ordinary citizens have a much more expansive right to go to court than anything included in this legislation before the Senate. So we are not even being consistent with the States of Idaho and Texas and many others and we are usurping the role of States which traditionally set the standards for tort actions in their own States'. That is an interesting position for people who I used to think were faithful to this notion of State rights, State practice, local control, and let the people of Rhode Island, Idaho, and Massachusetts, let those people decide. We are deciding if this Reed amendment fails and we pass the underlying bill that these people--Linda Franklin and James Franklin, the husband of the victim, and Lisa Brown, the mother of Iran Brown--are not worth it. They don't mean anything. You have heard people say these are junk lawsuits. Are these lives junk? They are not. We have a chance at least to preserve the right of individuals who have been harmed by the alleged negligence of gun dealers, gun manufacturers, and gun trade associations to get their case before a judge, to ask 12 fellow Americans to decide: Was there a duty by that defendant of more care, more attention, more foresight? Was that duty violated? Was I injured as a result of that and, therefore, should I be compensated by that person? If we fail to adopt this amendment, we are sending a very strong message. That message is, these people don't matter. The only thing that matters is the gun lobby. That would be a terrible message to send. I urge passage of the amendment and retain the remainder of my time.Mr. President, let me take a very few minutes because I do want to get on with the vote. First, the underlying legislation would deny the attorney general of Texas the right to defend the people of Texas in court with a suit, I believe. Second, the legislature in Texas could not authorize suits. They could under my amendment. But more importantly, going back to the Washington sniper, none of the carve-outs, none of the caveats would reach that. I don't think it is a matter of dispute. Negligent entrustment has been defined in the bill as supplying a qualified product by seller for use by another person where the seller knows or should know. There is no allegation that the seller knew that the young person came in and shoplifted the weapon. In fact, he could argue that there was no sale involved whatsoever. It was shoplifting. But that was negligence because I think we all agree that gun sellers have an obligation to keep their weapons under control. With respect to negligence per se, that is an unexcused violation of some enactment or administrative law. There are many States in the country that don't recognize that as a theory of tort recovery. Again, you would have to show they violated the law, they violated an administrative rule. In the case of Bushmaster, the situation is such that I don't believe there is any relevant legislation that says that an owner has to do anything in a way that would give rise to this negligence, per se. My point is that the legislation before us would effectively carve out all these suits. That is entirely correct. We are faced with a choice. This amendment does not allow these so-called political suits by municipalities, by political subdivisions, by groups, but it should allow individuals who have been harmed to have their day in court. I hope we can prevail... Mr. President, first, I thank Senator Craig for a very deliberate and civil debate. I thank my staff, Steve Eichenauer. The legislation before us is not about the facts. There is no crisis in litigation affecting the gun manufacturers. These are the litigation trends of Smith & Wesson: In 2001, 32 cases by municipalities; 10 by product liability. It declined steadily, with four cases ending on appeal and two cases with respect to personal liability. That is not a graph showing a crisis in litigation. The slope is going the wrong way. There is no crisis. There is no threat to procurement of military weapons. That is also conjured up out of thin air. This is not about legal principle. A fundamental legal principle in this country is if you are wronged by the negligence of another, you can go to court. This is not about legal principles. We have had talk about intervening criminal activities taking away the negligence of another. That is not what the statement of torts, which is the black letter law of the country, states. These exceptions in the bill have been carefully crafted to prevent lawsuits, not to enable appropriate lawsuits to go forward. It is not a failure of State courts to act. They have been acting. These cases have been going down under current State law. They are being handled by the States. It is about power, sheer naked power by the National Rifle Association--the power to take us off the Defense bill, the power to take us from that bill which would consider the quality of life and the safety of our troops to go to this legislation, the power to take us away from debate on stem cells which will save people and help people, so we can protect people who deal in dangerous weapons. It is about power; it is not about principle. But there is something else. If this legislation passes, what incentive will there be for a gun dealer or gun manufacturer to act reasonably? There is a rogues' gallery of gun dealers--Realco Guns in Maryland, Southern Police Equipment in Richmond--all across the country--Atlantic Gun and Tackle in Bedford Heights, OH. Hundreds of guns are sold and are ending up at crime scenes. If they are this blatant and reckless now, what do they do when we say, Don't worry, no one can touch you''? It will create huge disincentives. Finally, what we are doing today is silencing the voices of victims of gun violence, silencing people who have been wronged through the negligence of another. This is not about trying gun manufacturers for someone else's fault, this is about their own responsibility. Think tonight about what happened in Washington with the snipers. An FBI employee loading material at a Home Depot parking lot--shot. Some of that was attributed to the negligence of a gun dealer. That lady's husband and family would be silenced. Think about the young boy walking to his school in Maryland--shot. His family would be silenced. Think about the cabdriver filling up his cab. Tonight when we fill up our cars, think for a second, what if you were struck down, caught up in that web of violence. What if your family knew part of that was the result of the negligence of a gun dealer, a gun manufacturer. Who will take care of your family? Who will take care of you if you are paralyzed? We are telling those good people, our constituents: You are not worth it; the NRA is more important. You will suffer. If you don't have the money, you will be on charity. That will take care of you. This is wrong. It is wrong morally, it is wrongly legally. We should vote against this legislation. I passionately hope we do. I yield back my time.
