Before the passage of the gun industry protections, courts could hold gun companies responsible for the safety of their products. In March 2000, Smith & Wesson, one of the nation's largest gun manufacturers, adopted a robust set of safety controls on their handguns as part of a settlement to a major lawsuit brought by a coalition of mayors. If those injured can bring lawsuits against the gun companies, these businesses will make safer products and be more careful about how they distribute them.

Tort liability exists to spread the costs of a product among all of its users and also to create incentives to make the product safer. The 2005 Act undermines this by providing gun companies sweeping immunity from liability.

During her campaign for President, Hillary Clinton urged a repeal of this law and she made a point during the primaries of noting that Bernie Sanders had voted for it. Among the other yes votes were a number of California representatives still in Congress, including Democrats Mike Thompson and Jim Costa, and Republicans Devin Nunes, Ed Royce, Ken Calvert, Dana Rohrabacher, Darrell Issa and Duncan Hunter.

How many more tragedies and how many more deaths will it take before politicians are willing to stand up to the gun lobby and take meaningful action to get rid of weapons that serve no purpose but to kill many people quickly?

Until this happens, at the very least, Congress should end the special immunity that only gun manufacturers have been granted.

Erwin Chemerinsky is dean and professor of law at the University of California at Berkeley school of law. He can be reached at echemerinsky@law.berkeley.edu. He wrote this for The Sacramento Bee.