Firing squad.

• Author: Olson, Walter
• Position: Lawsuits against gunmakers

In the gun litigation wars, who really speaks for federalism?

The year is 2003, and you finally decide to exercise your American right to own a firearm. You check listings for a store near you ("gun shows," you vaguely recall, were suppressed back in the Clinton administration) and find a few still in business on shabby side streets. The merchandise has tripled in price, the selection is poor, and there's a four-month wait for the model you want. The worst part is that you have to enter all sorts of personal information on a long questionnaire, and the paperwork alone will take weeks to clear - leaving you to wonder who'll have access to your private data once it's in some central digitized registry of gun buyers.

How was it, you wonder, that handgun registration made it through our reputedly Republican Congress? Did some Brady Bill XVII slip by while you weren't looking? The dealer says no: Congress never voted on the new rules one way or the other. They came in as part of the big compromise deal in 2001 settling lawsuits against gun makers - settling some of the lawsuits, at least. Half the makers had already been bankrupted by the litigation, and the rest agreed "voluntarily" - ho ho ho - to what were termed marketing restrictions, aimed at keeping anyone from buying a gun in a state like yours unless they can show they're not planning to transship it to a friend in some place with a stricter gun control law.

Appalled, you complain to your legislators, who reply in chorus: Don't blame us! These suits were carried out under state law, but not our state's; in fact none of these legal actions made it past first base in this part of the country. The whole operation from start to finish has been carried out in states where you don't vote, before judges you didn't help pick, by lawyers you don't know, representing mayors of cities where you don't live. Back in the '90s, there was some talk of nationwide action to cut off excessive litigation against product manufacturers. But that idea never got anywhere because critics viewed it as insufficiently respectful of federalism - of the idea that localities should, by and large, be allowed to run their own legal affairs.

What's wrong with this picture? And which side more deserves to wrap itself in the historic mantle of federalism: the trial lawyers who've launched a coordinated nationwide assault on one industry after another, or the gun owners who'd like to preserve at least a local option of firearms freedom?

In recent years, discarding time-honored constraints on their power, state lawmakers and state courts have put forth one unprecedented assertion of authority after another. They've ditched...