NEW YORK - Forty-five gunmakers don't have to

change the way they

market products in New

York as the NAACP had

asked in a suit attempting

to tie the industry to

firearms deaths, a federal

judge ruled Monday.

The National Association

for the Advancement of

Colored People did prove

that the industry had

created a public nuisance by

contributing to an illegal

gun market, the judge said. He rejected the NAACP's

demand for changes in

business practices because he found the harm to Blacks

was not different in kind

from that suffered by other New Yorkers.

"It seems almost offensive that, almost a century and a

half after the freeing of the

slaves and formal insistence by the courts of full legal

equality, African-Americans

feel compelled to argue that they must sue to be

specially protected on the streets

of New York from guns," U.S. District Judge Jack

Weinstein said in a 175-page

ruling.

The judge's finding that the industry was partly

responsible for gun-related deaths

may help other cities and states in suits against

gunmakers, lawyers said.

The ruling is "an enormous victory" for others who have

sued, said Elisa Barnes, a

lawyer for the NAACP.

The NAACP claimed that gunmakers and distributors

created an unreasonable

danger to public health and safety by flooding the

state's handgun market with

weapons used by criminals.