The city of Gary's legal battle with guns has ricocheted around the courts for 16 years, absorbing glancing blows and small victories along the way.
Now, it's in the cross hairs of a bill in the state Senate that could deliver a knockout punch because a southern Indiana lawmaker says it stands in the way of creating gun industry jobs.
"It's been laying there like a beached whale and it's starting to stink," said state Sen. Jim Tomes, R-Wadesville, during a Senate committee hearing last week.
His bill would prohibit lawsuits against gun dealers and manufacturers, making it retroactive to 1999 when Gary's civil lawsuit was filed.
Tomes said gun manufacturers have told him the Gary lawsuit is stopping them from locating in Indiana. "They won't consider Indiana at all because of this lawsuit. We're talking about jobs here."
Tomes said his bill is an effort to eliminate the case. "I think the practice of holding somebody else responsible for the corrupt actions of other people is horrible policy," he told the committee.
Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson, who was Indiana attorney general when the suit was filed, said Tomes' bill smacks of legislative meddling.
"There's a practice in this country for allowing litigation to be resolved on its own merits. To have subsequent legislation directed at it is contrary to principles on which this country was founded."
Freeman-Wilson, who didn't testify during the hearing, called Tomes' claims of gun industries coming to Indiana "speculative at best."
Indiana University Maurer School of Law Professor Jody Madeira criticized the bill during the hearing, saying as a mother she's concerned about gun violence. She said the bill would provide "unprecedented" immunity to gun sellers.
The Gary lawsuit is pending in Lake Superior Court Judge Calvin Hawkins' court in East Chicago. The city is represented by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. There's no upcoming court date on the docket, but Freeman-Wilson said the case would be moving along.
In August, 1999, troubled by gun violence that wracked his city, former Gary mayor Scott King sued 21 gun manufacturers and distributors and six local dealers and three associations. Two local retailers reached settlements with the city, including the now-closed Fetla's in Valparaiso and Westforth Sports in Gary. Ameripawn in Lake Station no longer sells handguns.
A trial court judge dismissed gun manufacturers and dealers, but a higher court reversed the ruling.
The lawsuit contended major manufacturers like Smith & Wesson, Colt and Beretta and gun dealers should be accountable for readily supplying guns they know will reach criminals and others who illegally can't buy them.
King pointed to an investigation by Gary police in which undercover officers made straw purchases of at least nine handguns and boxes of ammunition after telling gun store clerks they were convicted felons or juveniles.
In its successful appeal, the city pointed to 70 murders in 1997 and 54 in 1998. From 1997 through 2,000, 764 recovered handguns were sold by dealers named as defendants.
About 30 cities across the country, including Chicago, filed similar lawsuits. All of them have been dismissed except Gary's. Setting aside the gun makers' arguments that a federal shield law protects them from suits, the Indiana Supreme Court ruled the case could proceed in 2009.