Jeremy Rabkin

Jeremy Rabkin, a professor of government at Cornell University, argues in the following viewpoint that lawsuits that blame gun manufacturers for gun violence are frivolous, abusive, and likely to be ineffective in reducing gun violence. Rabkin asserts that the problem of gun violence is not serious enough to warrant such lawsuits and that the social benefits of firearms must be weighed against their harms. Rabkin concludes that, given the complexity of gun control issues, they are best decided by lawmakers, not lawyers. He supports state-level, rather than federal, gun controls, so that different states can experiment with different approaches to reducing gun violence.

As you read, consider the following questions:

1. By the end of 1998, according to Rabkin, what percent of American mayors were considering filing lawsuits against gun manufacturers?
2. How are...