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With the reported ouster of the head of the gun lobby's main trade association, the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the gun industry appear to be closing ranks in opposition to suits against the industry.

Today's report in the Wall Street Journal that Richard Feldman is about to be dismissed as the executive director of the American Shooting Sports Council is yet another indicator of the industry's long-standing intransigence. This is an industry that has, and will continue, to resist reform to the death. That's why it finds itself in a growing legal predicament. Left to its own devices, this industry has, quite simply, failed to act responsibly in the design, sale and distribution of its deadly product. Now it's paying the price for decades of neglect.

Gun manufacturers believe somehow or other that they are immune from traditional standards of corporate responsibility. And now, following a stinging and unexpected defeat at the hands of a Brooklyn jury in the Hamilton case, they are closing ranks again with the National Rifle Association.

The firing of Feldman shows the transparency of the NRA's arguments against reasonable gun control legislation. When Miami-Dade County filed a lawsuit against the gun industry, the NRA responded last week by sending its accomplices in the Florida legislature to wield a heavy-handed bill that would not only preempt the rights of cities from airing their grievances against the gun lobby in court, but would make a felon out of any mayor or county official who filed such a lawsuit. Yet, when Feldman approached the attorneys for the plaintiffs in the city of New Orleans' lawsuit against the gun manufacturers, he was shown the door by the NRA.

Litigation is too expensive, they say, but settlement is out of the question. Their only remaining tactic's intimidation. This is the kind of political bullying that the gun lobby is so famous for, and we can expect to see a lot more of it the weeks and monthsahead.

Rather than mounting the political barricades, the industry should be talking to us about how to make guns safer, and how to keep them out of the hands of children and criminals. Dennis Henigan, director of the Legal Action Project of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, who is representing three of the cities who have sued the gun industry said, "We're not trying to bring the gun manufacturers to their knees, we are trying to bring them to their senses."

The NRA and the industry are joined at the hip in a desperate struggle. In the words of one gun industry executive, this is going to be a "fight to the death." But now the NRA and gun manufacturers have started to swing blindly -- and reason is taking the first hit.

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Handgun Control Inc., chaired by Sarah Brady, is the nation's largest citizens' gun control lobbying organization. Based in Washington, D.C., HCI works to enact stronger federal, state and local gun control laws, but does not seek to ban handguns. Founded in 1974, HCI has more than 400,000 members nationwide and works with local groups around the country to enact and protect reasonable gun control laws. More information about HCI and its affiliated organization, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, can be found on the Web site at www.handguncontrol.org.

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