Children who live with violence learn violence Social workers, experts see background of abuse, trauma among suspects in recent shootings

A collection of guns were confiscated from the Cutthroats Gang and displayed during a press conference at Cleveland Police Headquarters in Cleveland.

(Lisa DeJong/The Plain Dealer)

Stephen T. Chema is an attorney in Washington, D.C.

We live in Washington, D.C. and Cleveland, respectively. Before the end of the summer, the number of murders in our nation's capital had already eclipsed the 2014 rate. Meanwhile in Cleveland, the story has been much the same, punctuated by the unimaginably horrific parade of stories of young innocent children caught in the crossfire on city streets.

There can be little doubt that gun violence is surging in America this year. This August, at a gathering of the police chiefs of major U.S. cities, a survey of attendees reported that three out of four cities have seen increases in homicides this year and about 60 percent have seen an increase in nonfatal shootings.

According to America's police chiefs, the overall increase in gun violence has been accompanied by increases in gang-related and retaliatory killings.

The common denominator in these stories playing out in Cleveland, Washington and in other major American cities is the availability of cheap and illegal firearms.

Thomas V. Chema is the president emeritus of Hiram College

In many cases, the perpetrators of these crimes are repeat offenders, and many have prior convictions that would disqualify them from being able to own a gun. A robust black market in illegal firearms floods U.S. cities with guns that end up in the hands of those who would use them to commit crimes.

Complicit in this surging cycle of violence are the manufacturers, distributors, and retail sellers of firearms that supply the black market through seemingly legitimate sales to straw purchasers who obtain weapons on behalf of those who cannot buy them, or those who wish to sell them to others who cannot legally buy them.

These businesses are made aware that the products that they manufacture, wholesale, and sell in retail sales have become crime guns whenever they receive notice from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, which traces guns involved in crime through the National Tracing Center.

Sadly, this information falls on deaf ears. The gun industry collectively is unwilling to live without the profits it knows come from the sales of guns that are diverted into the black market, and which become tomorrow's crime guns.

At one time, this knowledge came with a price, as manufacturers and distributors who chose to hide their heads in the sand rather than stop the flow of weapons into the black market began to be held legally responsible in lawsuits brought by cities and families of victims of gun violence.

Instead of altering their behavior and cracking down on a small and identifiable number of bad actors, the gun industry fought back by aggressively lobbying Congress to pass a law that made them immune from such lawsuits. In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, insulating the industry from liability. Similarly, the gun industry successfully lobbied state legislatures in 34 states, including Ohio, to pass similar immunity laws.

Since then, gun industry profits have steadily grown, bolstered by their unfettered ability to supply the black market with a steady flow of crime guns, and further increased by the legitimate purchases by citizens who have become frightened by this base of crime and now feel compelled to arm themselves.

Lost in the debate over what the Second Amendment guarantees and the need to stanch the bleeding in the streets is the reality that providing immunity for the gun industry denies accountability to those who enable the diversion of weapons into the black market for crime guns. Pro-gun-industry advocates often repeat the cliche that if legislation reforming gun laws is passed, only criminals will have guns.

This turns the reality of how guns wind up in the commission of many urban crimes upside down. The truth is many deaths in the future can be prevented simply by holding the gun industry -- which is responsible for creating an informal marketplace in US cities where guns can easily be purchased cheaply and illegally -- responsible for their actions. This can be done without affecting any law-abiding citizen's right to purchase, own, or carry a firearm.

Since we began preparing this article, there have been two more mass shootings in our country: one in Colorado and one in California.

The problem is that these mass-shooting incidents are often used by gun industry advocates to deflect attention from the larger problem that we could solve, in part, if we stripped the gun industry of its immunity. Helping to stop mass shootings might be a wonderful consequence. In any event, it is time to rethink and repeal our laws immunizing irresponsible actors in the gun industry.

Stephen T. Chema is an attorney in Washington, D.C. Thomas V. Chema is president emeritus of Hiram College.