Gary can start to subpoena gun sales records, a judge ruled Monday.

The city’s lawsuit — filed in 1999 — wants those records from Westforth Sports and other gun shops to see how weapons sold locally to suspicious buyers end up in violent street crimes.

Gun manufacturers and retailers are fighting this, calling the city’s efforts a “fishing expedition” last week in court.

Lake Superior Judge John Sedia lifted restrictions Monday, allowing the case’s discovery — or legal fact-finding process — to go forward. It’s due by February 2024.

He also ruled on a motion — denying the manufacturers’ request to sanction Gary’s lawyers.

Sedia also rejected a motion by Westforth Sports and South County Guns to “quash” a subpoena and denied a motion by Gary pawn shop Jack’s Loan Office to limit its “obligations” to respond to Gary’s requests for information in the case.

Gary is paying for their costs to produce documents. None are official parties in the suit, but can still be subpoenaed.

The next court hearing is Jan. 16.

“It’s refreshing to see some movement forward,” Gary corporation counsel Rodney Pol said Tuesday.

Lawyers for Westforth and gun manufacturers would not be immediately reached.

The lawsuit contends major manufacturers including Smith & Wesson, Colt, and Beretta and local gun dealers should be held as a public nuisance for supplying guns they know will reach criminals and others who legally can’t buy them.

Even as Westforth Sports was officially dismissed years ago as a party in the lawsuit, its alleged sales practices were central to last week’s hearing.

The city’s lawyers have long said Westforth effectively was a “high volume” gun trafficker by selling weapons to straw purchasers that wound up in violent street crimes.

Attorney Philip Bangle, representing the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in court that between 2004 and 2005, the store sold guns to more than 100 customers who had been flagged by the ATF, because weapons they bought there before were traced from Gary crimes. They identified 450 sales in that period to “illegal buyers.”

He noted they didn’t have data for Hammond or Chicago.

Since then, there were likely “hundreds” or “thousands” more straw purchases, Bangle said. Access to Westforth’s books was “essential” to uncovering trafficking patterns, he said.

Chicago sued Westforth Sports in April 2021, alleging the shop repeatedly violated federal gun laws, often resulting in criminal charges against straw purchasers. The city further alleged that the shop’s owner, Earl Westforth, ignored warnings from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives about suspicious purchases at the store.

The lawsuit was dismissed May 25 in Cook County for jurisdiction issues. The judge said straw purchases actually happened in Indiana.

A 2017 report issued by the Chicago Police Department stated that Westforth Sports was the third-largest supplier of guns used in crimes in that city.

Gary’s lawsuit has survived multiple challenges.

Dismissed by lower courts three times and revived each time by Indiana’s higher courts, the case is back in Sedia’s Hammond court after a November 2019 state Supreme Court decision bounced it back.

Gary witnessed 70 murders in 1997 and 54 in 1998. From 1997 through 2000, 764 recovered handguns were sold by dealers named as defendants.

The Chicago Tribune and Post-Tribune freelance reporter Carole Carlson contributed.