Smoking guns: a big-city mayor trains his sights on weapon makers.

• Author: Schulz, Max

It took a little legal inspiration, but thanks to the tobacco wars another unpopular industry is finding itself fixed in the cross hairs of politicians ravenous for revenue and publicity. The next group of manufacturers attempting to dodge the bullet of predatory civil litigation is the nation's firearms industry. Companies such as Smith & Wesson, Glock, Colt, and Beretta are bracing for a legal fusillade sure to be directed their way. The first round is likely to fired from Philadelphia, the very place where the Second Amendment was drafted.

This spring, Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell announced that he is "seriously" considering bringing suit against handgun manufacturers as a way to counter the gun-related violence he says is ravaging his city. And the level of violence is startling. Eighty-two percent of Philadelphia's 410 murders last year were committed with firearms. Gun homicides increased by 102 percent between 1985 and 1995.

"The magnitude of the crisis in Philadelphia is that gun violence is plain and simple out of control," Rendell told the April meeting in Washington, D.C., of the American Shooting Sports Council, the major trade organization for most of the nation's gun manufacturers. "We will do anything, we will try anything, to reduce the carnage which is tearing the heart and soul out of Philadelphia."

When Rendell talks like that, people take notice. Well-known for his ability to get things done quickly, he inherited a fiscal and political mess when he took office in 1992. When Philadelphia's immensely powerful municipal workers walked out on the new mayor, he did more than hang tough. He won pay cuts, vacation reductions, and changes in work rules - and immense popular support from voters that continues to this day.

In true anything-goes fashion, Rendell, a former city prosecutor, thinks a lawsuit seeking damages for the costs the city incurs due to gun violence may be the answer. From overtime for police and paramedics to the money needed to hose blood from crime scenes, Rendell estimates gun violence costs his government $58.8 million each year. And he figures that if the states can pick the pockets of cigarette barons for health costs linked to tobacco use, he should be able to do the same to the makers of the guns most often used in Philadelphia crimes. Rendell plans to make his decision sometime after Labor Day.

The complicated legal strategy is still being developed by the mayor's team. Rendell and his staff have yet...