Chicago Mayor Takes His Anti-Gun Fight to World Court

Chicago Mayor Daley: Send Gun Industry to World Court

April 27, 2010
BY FRAN SPIELMAN City Hall Reporter

Six years after the state Supreme Court dismissed his $433 million lawsuit against the gun industry , Mayor Daley today called for a change of venue — to the World Court normally reserved for disputes between nations and crimes against humanity.

Wrapping up the sixth annual Richard J. Daley Global Cities Forum , Daley convinced more than a dozen of his counterparts from around the world to approve a resolution urging "redress against the gun industry through the courts of the world" in The Hague.

"This is coming from international mayors. They're saying, 'We’re tired of your guns, America. ... We don't want those anymore because guns kill and injure people,' " Daley told a news conference at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

"If we ship over poison to a country, don’t you think we should be responsible for it? That’s what they’re saying: 'Be responsible for what you manufacture and sell in my country.' ... You have to think outside the box. You have to be [aggressive] about how you protect your people."

Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard Casauban noted that the Mexican government is waging a brutal war against drug cartels that get “85 percent” of their weapons from the United States.

"The U.S. government says, 'We cannot do a lot of things to stop this,'" Casauban said. "We should take actions with legal effects in order to stop this trade between the United States and Mexico."

Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter acknowledged that using the World Court is a long-shot. But, he said “you never know until you try” and it’s worth a try to counter the political muscle and money of the National Rifle Association.

"We have to do different things. The political establishment in many state capitals — and certainly in Washington — [is] so deathly afraid of the NRA that people cannot make the right decision for their own constituents," Nutter said.

He added, "People are being killed every day in the United States of America with illegal weapons. I love the 2nd Amendment. [But], I have a 1st Amendment right not to be shot."
Gun violence also dominated a panel discussion earlier in the day at the Global Cities Forum.
It happened when Daley argued that Chicagoans have to "open our hearts and our pocketbooks" to save another generation from being lost.

"We don't say, 'Come to us.' Government has to go to them. They’re isolated. Maybe they have a substance abuse problem. The grandmother is 70 years old and raising grandchildren. ... We have to intervene in a different way we never have before. We have to have more homes for children, such as Boys and Girls Town to help them at earlier ages,” the mayor said.

"This idea of losing a 14-year-old to gangs and drugs in America is unacceptable. It is not a criteria we should ever live with."

Daley’s 1998 lawsuit accused the gun industry of creating a public nuisance by using irresponsible suburban gun shops to flood the city with guns that traffickers supplied to criminals.

The city and the county sought reimbursement for policing, emergency services and prosecutions tied to gun violence using nuisance laws normally reserved for polluters. In 2004, the state Supreme Court refused to create, what it called "an entirely new species of public nuisance liability."

Source: Chicago Sun – Times