Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act-Motion to Proceed

PROTECTION OF LAWFUL COMMERCE IN ARMS ACT-MOTION TO PROCEED

Mr. CORNYN. Mr. President, I rise to say a few words on our broken civil justice system. Today we are debating yet another common sense reform proposal, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

Despite many recent opportunities, Congress has been unable to enact meaningful tort reform, largely because of strong resistance by trial lawyers and their allies in this chamber. Just yesterday we failed to reach cloture on medical liability reform that would protect our mothers and their children. We have been blocked from enacting broader medical liability reform.

And we saw this drama played out last year with the Senate's failure-by one vote-to end a filibuster of the Class Action Fairness Act and give the bill a vote on the floor. Despite the fact that a bipartisan majority stands ready to pass that bill, the obstructionist opposition prevents us from acting.

I believe our civil justice system is badly broken. It serves the interests of the few at the expense of the many. It has become almost entirely directed not at dealing out justice, but at finding as many scapegoats as possible, the wealthier the better.

It used to be that if you slipped and fell on a sidewalk, you picked yourself up and kept on walking. But nowadays, far too many trial lawyers continue to feed the idea that instead of getting up again, you ought to sue the maker of the sidewalk for making it too hard, the maker of your shoes for not putting enough ridges on your soles, and everyone in your near vicinity for not rushing to catch you as you fell. After all, there is money to be made.

The current system rewards lawyers and short-changes the real victims. There is no doubt that this system of over-litigation cannot last without more negative results. And without reform, I fear the entire system will collapse under its own weight.

Today, the Senate has the opportunity to take a step in the right direction on this problem, by passing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

This bill is simple: it provides that lawsuits may not be brought against lawful manufacturers and sellers of firearms or ammunition if the suits are based on criminal or unlawful use of the product by someone else-when a criminal, not the manufacturer, commits a crime.

Such lawsuits are not intended to find real fault, but to play on the emotions of a jury and drive the gun industry out of business, holding legitimate, law-abiding manufacturers and dealers liable for the intentional and criminal acts of others.

This bill reinforces years of legal precedent-that individuals and businesses are responsible for the harm they case, not for the actions of third parties over whom they have no control.

Many Judges across the Nation recognize the ridiculous nature of these suits. The Louisiana Supreme Court struck down New Orleans' right to bring such a suit in the face of State law forbidding it, and said "this lawsuit constitutes an indirect attempt to regulate the lawful design, manufacture, marketing and sale of firearms."

In dismissing New York State's case last year, a New York appellate court observed "the plain fact that courts are the least suited, least equipped, and thus the least appropriate branch of government to regulate and micro-manage the manufacturing, marketing, distribution and sale of handguns."

Thankfully, many States are acting: 33 States have enacted some form of legislation to prevent junk lawsuits against the firearms industry based on the criminal behavior of others. We must follow the lead of the majority of States, and pass this common sense measure.

Don't allow any illusions about the intentions of the people involved in these suits. At an American Bar Association symposium in 1999, one of the plaintiffs' attorneys for the antigun lawsuits explained that the attorneys had read the Dun & Bradstreet reports on the firearms companies, estimated how much the companies could spend defending themselves against litigation, and then filed so many cases in so many jurisdictions that the gun companies would not be able to spend the money to see the cases through to a verdict. The irresponsible tort community is simply looking for another law-abiding business to prey on.

And even if all the gun companies in America were put together, they would not constitute a single Fortune 500 company-so the gun companies are much more vulnerable to abusive litigation than deep-pocketed giants such as the New York Times.

The real way to stop gun crime in America is simple: those who abuse the constitutional right to keep and bear arms by using firearms to commit crimes must be aggressively prosecuted and punished. When I was Attorney General of Texas, I joined with then-Governor Bush to launch a program we called Texas Exile. That program provided local prosecutors with the funds to get more than 2,000 guns off the streets and to issue more than 1,500 indictments for gun crimes, resulting in almost 1,200 convictions in its first 3 years of existence alone.

And when President Bush came to Washington, he built upon our success in Texas by making Project Safe Neighborhoods one of his top priorities. Project Safe Neighborhoods expands on existing programs that target gun crimes in each State. It is a nationwide commitment to reduce gun crime in America by networking these existing local programs and providing those programs with the additional tools necessary to be successful.

The Bush administration has committed more than $900 million to this effort over three years, using funding to hire new Federal and State prosecutors, support investigators, providing training, distribute gun lock safety kits, deter juvenile gun crime, and develop and promote community outreach efforts as well as to support other gun violence reduction strategies. And Texas has seen great success with the integration of Project Safe Neighborhoods with the existing Texas Exile infrastructure.

These are the kinds of steps that get real results, not ill-intentioned frivolous lawsuits. I question the integrity of any system that would reward such abject agreed. We need to work in this body to fix our broken civil justice system, and this bill is a good place to start.

I am somewhat bemused by the arguments I have already heard this morning on this motion to invoke cloture. In fact, we want to have a debate. Those who oppose even having a debate are, I guess, not going to allow it to happen. I hope they are not successful in blocking debate. It is healthy to have a debate.

I am bemused by the suggestion that this is a narrow bill directed toward special interests. Yesterday, we had a narrow bill to protect the special interests known as pregnant women and children. However, the trial lawyers prevailed and we were unable to get that commonsense tort reform measure on the floor for debate. I submit that the suggestion is misguided that this is a special interest piece of legislation. This is in the public interest.

I suggest the worst thing about the arguments we hear from the other side of this debate is they are misdirected. In other words, they contend this bill would immunize lawsuits against gun manufacturers for what is a lawful activity. The fact is, there is a shrine in our Constitution, the right of the people to keep and bear arms. What they are trying to do would have the effect of impeding and impairing that constitutional right because, as Senator Craig has pointed out, there have been many lawsuits filed against gun manufacturers for the very fact of making a lawful product, none of which, so far as I understand, has been successful but which are destroying these companies which are in the business of manufacturing a lawful product, destroying jobs, and impairing ultimately the constitutional right of citizens, people like you, me, and others in this room from owning firearms to protect our homes and our property, our families for use in sporting events, for hunting, and other lawful and decent activity.

The focus of the opponents of this bill is totally misguided. What we ought to focus on is the criminals who use firearms illegally to commit crimes. In fact, I have had a little experience in this area as attorney general of Texas. With the cooperation of then-Governor Bush, we created a program in Texas called Texas Exile. I wish we could claim we originated the idea but we borrowed the idea from Richmond, VA, something called Project Exile, which was a cooperative effort of local, State, and Federal law enforcement officials to target criminals who use guns to commit crimes and convicted felons who could not even legally own a firearm. The great thing about that was, No. 1, it was so successful; No. 2, it was not a wedge issue which, clearly, there is an attempt to inject wedge politics in this debate. But it was an issue which everyone could agree: The NRA, the gun control folks, everyone came together and said, yes, that is what we ought to do. Let's focus on the criminals who misuse this product.

Indeed, in 2001, Texas led the Nation in the number of criminal defendants who were indicted for weapons violations in Federal court. In 2000, there were 757 in that year alone, which was almost double the number of indictments in 1999. This amount was greater than the number of defendants indicted on similar charges in the States of New York and California combined.

How were we able to use the existing criminal law in a way that made our streets and our communities and our States safer? We simply enlisted the help of local law enforcement to work with Federal law enforcement authorities so when a criminal was caught illegally possessing a firearm-illegal because a felon cannot legally possess a firearm-or someone under a protective order-it is a Federal offense to carry or possess a firearm when you are under a protective order-or someone who simply used a gun to commit a bank robbery or any other offense, we focused on the gun possession portion of that and were successful in leading the Nation in the number of prosecutions. That sends a very powerful message that if you carry a gun illegally or if you use a gun illegally to commit a crime, then we are coming after you with everything that the law allows.

It is a powerful deterrent to the sort of illegal conduct that causes the harm that the opponents of the bill-and I grant their good faith; I think they believe in good faith that what they are proposing is a path to a good result, a sound result-that is reducing injuries, reducing death, but it is misguided. All this does is encourage lawsuits against a manufacturer of a legal product when someone criminally misuses that product to cause another person harm.

As the Senator from Idaho has noted, this is death by 1,000 cuts or death by 1,000 lawsuits, so to speak, because anytime a gun manufacturer is sued, even with a frivolous lawsuit, they have to hire a lawyer, they have to defend that case at greater expense which threatens their economic viability which in turn threatens the jobs of the people who work there in that company.

I wish we could have a broader debate on commonsense tort reform generally, but we have seen what happens when we try to raise these issues. We could not even get cloture on a class action reform bill. We have not been able to bring up asbestos reform which is damaging a lot of good job providers in this country and not benefiting the people who are truly sick but only the lawsuit industry which benefits from churning the cases without really benefiting the people who need compensation.

We found in almost every instance-medical liability, class action reform, or asbestos reform-we are simply not able to even get a debate. We cannot even get cloture because we cannot find 60 people in the Senate who are willing to stand up and say this is a serious problem. It is raising the costs of health care. It is bankrupting companies in the case of asbestos. It is an abuse of the class action system in the case of class action reform where lawyers get millions and consumers get a coupon.

So the strategy has been, and it is a good strategy, to try to identify certain types of cases. Yesterday it was obstetrical liability cases which have threatened the ability of pregnant women to find doctors to simply deliver their babies.

I recounted in my own State in 154 different counties a woman cannot even find a doctor to deliver her baby, an obstetrician, because people are leaving the practice. It is pricing out of reach health care liability insurance, putting people out of business, hospitals out of business, and we are simply seeing the tail wag the dog in each of these areas. The tail seems to be the special interest groups that like the status quo, which is a broken civil justice system that does not serve justice.

I commend the Senator from Idaho for bringing up this bill which admittedly is a narrow bill. Boy, I wish we could have a broader debate on tort reform, commonsense tort reform generally. When we talk about what causes job loss in this country, it is the regulation by litigation, it is the tort tax that imposes additional costs on consumers and discourages innovation and entrepreneurs in this country. We are not talking about locking the courthouse door and denying someone access to justice. I believe strongly we must retain meaningful access to justice for anyone who is harmed by the wrongful conduct of any other person. But the system right now benefits the few at the expense of the many in ways that I doubt consumers really understand because it adds costs to their products, and it makes it harder for entrepreneurs and small businesses to open their doors and to hire people to allow them to provide for their families.

So here we are, rather than taking on a broader tort reform bill, we are left with a narrow bill. I congratulate the Senator from Idaho for it. I believe we should protect manufacturers of lawful products whose products are misused by criminals. Let's focus on the criminals, not the people who are providing jobs and are producing a lawful product.

With that, I yield back any remaining time I have to the Senator from Idaho.