Gun Industry Sues Over Safety Pact

The gun industry, under increasing attack by its opponents, has found a way to fire back.

Seven gun makers and the National Shooting Sports Foundation have filed suit against the federal government, the attorneys general of New York and Connecticut, and 16 cities across the country.

The gun manufacturers are suing over the plan for the federal Housing and Urban Development Corporation and various cities to give purchasing preference to guns made by manufacturers who agree to design safer guns. The agreement furthermore said that any gun makers who signed on would be dropped from lawsuits against gun makers that are being contemplated by federal officials and some cities.

Smith & Wesson is the only gun maker to sign on so far to the gun safety agreement announced last March by President Clinton. Smith & Wesson has agreed to install gun locks on all the weapons it sells and require background checks on anyone who wants to buy a weapon at a gun show.

The gun industry lawsuit filed Wednesday in federal court in Atlanta says the government preference for buying Smith & Wesson, which is the current result of the deal, amounts to an ''illegal conspiracy in restraint of trade. ''

HUD Secretary Andrew Cuomo calls the lawsuit ''frivolous. After the Smith & Wesson agreement, there are two types of gun manufacturers: safe and unsafe. Working with law enforcement, we prefer to do business with the safe manufacturers.''

16 city governments are targeted in the lawsuit: Atlanta; Boston; Bridgeport, Conn.; Detroit; the District of Columbia; Gary, Ind.; Newark, N.J.; Miami-Dade County; Philadelphia; St. Louis; and six California communities: Berkeley, East Palo Alto, Inglewood, Oakland, San Francisco, and San Mateo.

''We are demanding cities stop the effort of using their purchasing power to control the distribution and design of firearms,'' says Jeff Reh, general counsel for Beretta U.S.A. Corp, one of the seven suing companies.

The other six companies are: Browning Arms, Inc.; Colt's Manufacturing, Inc.; Glock, Inc.; SIG Arms, Inc.; Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc.; and Taurus International Manufacturing, Inc.

The Connecticut and New York state attorneys general are named in the lawsuit because they helped draw up the gun safety agreement.

Connecticut state attorney general Richard Blumenthal calls the lawsuit ''Preposterous, false and unfounded and an insult to law enforcement. ''It is plainly an effort to deceive and confuse the public, and distract law enforcement officials from the work of improving gun safety and stopping crime.''

Bridgeport mayor Joseph Ganim sees the lawsuit as ''a desperate move by the gun makers to try and prevent us from doing what is the right thing to do. They continue to forget that our only goal is to protect children and families, and their only goal is to protect corporate profits and greed.''

Robert Delfay, president of the National Shooting Sports Foundatin, argues that local officials have wrongly ''tried everything from litigation to economic extortion to compel compliance on a national level with their own individual ideas about gun design, ownership and distribution.''

Reaction to the lawsuit from Capitol Hill has been swift and partisan.

Senator Frank Lautenberg says he's ''disappointed that some gun manufacturers have chosen confrontation over cooperation.'' The New Jersey Democrat adds that ''the federal government isn't asking for much, only that these companies help adopt common sense measures to keep guns from ending up in the wrong hands.''

On the GOP side, Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah slams the Clinton administration as having overstepped its authority. ''From the allegations of the complaint filed today, it now appears the administration seeks to further its goals by circumventing the will of Congress and illegitimately bringing the weight of the executive branch to bear on law-abiding firearm manufacturers.''

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