In 1999, at the end of a decade in which Gary, Indiana, had endured being labeled as the “murder capital of the nation,” then-Mayor Scott King filed a suit against gun manufacturers he believed were knowingly flooding his city with illegal guns.
Scott King: And it was clear that the officer posing as the teenager was the one interested in buying the gun. Scott King: When the paperwork time came, it would switch and everything was put in the name of either the woman posing as mom or a girlfriend, who were of age. It's known as a straw man purchase.
Alain Stephens: The U.S. is in the middle of unprecedented gun violence. Mayors turn to Washington for help, hoping Congress will do something to slow the tide of guns flooding their cities. But they realize they’re in it alone. So, in 1999 about 30 cities team up and hatch a plan to stop guns at their source.
Scott King: The number of guns coming in far outpaced any logical, even industry-based, protocols for how many guns are you gonna ship to a particular market. Scott King: For most people living in Gary, just the carnage was such that taking any reasonable step was not gonna generate a lot of opposition.
Scott King: You know, it's a common lament of mayors. We're on the front lines and there are certain things where we can't do it by ourselves. And the expectations were that if nothing else, it would capture attention at a national and a state level, where most of the power, most of the authority is.It’s just the wrong kind of attention.
Alain Stephens: The NRA got started in the 1870s, and for a century it mainly focused on gun safety and marksmanship, thanks to tons of government money. Alain Stephens: Carter sounds like a zealot and his origin story is pretty wild; The New York Times uncovered it in 1981. They found that when he was 17 years old, Carter was convicted of murdering a 15-year-old teen named Ramon Casiano. According to court testimony, Casiano was hanging around the Carter house one day with a couple of other kids. Carter’s mom thought that Casiano knew something about the family’s car that had been stolen.
Mike Spies: And so the organization began to be able to say, “The government wants to take your weapons away.” And it became really useful for rallying voters, especially because Republicans found it to be a valuable rallying cry. Mike Spies: Lawmakers opted to give the NRA power. It only had power because they opted to give it power because there was some benefit they got out of that. It was an ability to then be able to wear the organization's support as a badge of honor when it came time to run for re-election.
Alain Stephens: Coming up, we hear how the NRA ends up doubling down on its rhetoric. And ultimately comes up with a strategy that would make the gun industry bulletproof from all those lawsuits. That, after the break.Alain Stephens: While the NRA is growing in power, rallying its forces, and doing whatever it can to make the gun industry impervious to attack, American cities like Gary, Indiana, are dealing with the consequences.
Grace Tatter: They don’t go far, just a few miles away, to a town called Merrillville. Despite the move, Anthony is back in a parking lot in Gary in 2007, when his friends get into a fight after a basketball game and another teenager shoots and kills him. Mike Spies: What you saw happening was the organization start to become almost a religion. You know what I mean? A way for people to organize their lives. A way of life, a set of values, a tribe.
Alain Stephens: George W. Bush is a Texan, gun totin’, and an ally to the NRA cause. With a friendly administration, a growing bank account, and millions of members, the NRA makes a major power play. It backs a plan that would wipe out all those lawsuits that Scott King and the other mayors have filed, and make it nearly impossible to sue the gun industry in the future. It’s a Congressional bill called the Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act, also known as PLCCA.
Alain Stephens: This doesn’t sit well with all members of Congress. North Carolina Democrat Mel Watt condemns the measure on Washington Journal. Jonathan Lowy: It basically makes victims of gun violence into second class citizens that don't have anywhere close to the rights to seek civil justice that every other person that is victimized by any other business or industry has.
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