Carl T. Bogus, professor of law at Roger Williams University, is the
author of Why Lawsuits Are Good for America: Disciplined Democracy,
Big Business and the Common Law (NYU). He also edited The Second
Amendment in Law and History (New Press).
In the late summer and fall of 1997, small news leaks began appearing that Mayor Edward Rendell of Philadelphia (who is now governor of Pennsylvania) was thinking about suing the firearms indus