Newswise — In the aftermath of the San Bernardino mass shooting, there is likely to be a chorus of calls for stricter gun controls, but little follow up in state legislatures, and no reaction whatsoever from Congress, an expert on legal issues surrounding gun control in the United States said.
Timothy Lytton, a professor of law at Georgia State University's College of Law, said the recent jury verdict against a gun store in Milwaukee suggests that civil litigation may play a role in reducing access to guns by individuals who are not legally qualified to purchase them—such as minors, individuals convicted of a crime, or those with mental illness. “However, this is unlikely to have any effect on the kind of mass shooting that occurred in San Bernardino,” he said.
“The politics of gun control and the Constitutional limits on restricting private gun ownership are such that we can expect to see these sorts of shootings regularly in the future,” said Lytton, author of the book Suing the Gun Industry: A Battle at the Crossroads of Gun Control and Mass Torts. Lytton has appeared in a number of media outlets as an expert on gun violence and lawsuits against the industry, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, Reuters, the Boston Globe, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, the Hartford Courant, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, MSNBC and 11 Alive as well as several public radio stations. He also recently wrote an opinion piece “Milwaukee Case Could Encourage Gun Stores to Reduce Illegal Sales” that was published in The Conversation and Newsweek.
Read more about Timothy Lytton at http://law.gsu.edu/profile/timothy-d-lytton/.
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