The Coordinated Conspiracy Against America's Gunmakers

Earlier today we reported on the new attack on U.S. gun manufacturers by New Jersey’s anti-gun Attorney General Gurbir Grewel, which was unveiled when gunmaker Smith & Wesson sued Grewel and the state of New Jersey over a sweeping subpoena seeking decades of internal documents relating to the company’s advertising and marketing.

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On today’s Bearing Arms’ Cam & Co. I’m joined by Larry Keane, the senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, who says that Grewel and other anti-gun AGs like California’s Xavier Becerra are partnering with the nation’s largest gun control groups in a “coordinated conspiracy” to bankrupt the firearms industry through litigation.

As Keane lays out, the coordinated efforts on the part of gun control advocates and anti-gun attorneys has been going on for several years, but their latest strategy stems from a decision by the Connecticut Supreme Court, which ruled last March that families who lost loved ones in the attack on Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012 could sue Remington over its marketing materials, which the plaintiff’s attorneys argued “knowingly marketed and promoted the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle for use in assaults against human beings.”

Remington appealed that decision to SCOTUS, arguing that the 2005 law known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act precluded these types of suits, but last November the Court turned away the challenge, allowing the lawsuit to proceed.

Once the Connecticut plaintiffs got the green light for their litigation the coalition of gun control groups, law firms, and Attorneys General quickly realized that as long as they kept their focus on the marketing and advertising for guns, rather than suing over the guns themselves, their lawsuits against gun manufacturers are likely to be allowed to proceed, even if they’re not guaranteed a victory at trial.

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Of course, for the gun control activists and their allies, a court victory isn’t an absolute necessity. As Keane points out on today’s show, a similar litigation strategy on the part of anti-gun advocates back in the 1990s had two objectives: bankrupt the firearms industry through massive financial losses via jury awards or bankrupt the industry via a “death by a thousand cuts” tactic of launching so many lawsuits that the industry couldn’t afford to defend against all of them.

Make sure you check out the entire conversation with Larry Keane to get an idea of the scope and potential consequences of the latest anti-gun crusade led by Grewel and his merry band of gun-banners. The threat is real, and unfortunately it’s going to be with us until the courts smack down this latest attempt to destroy our Second Amendment rights by bankrupting America’s gunmakers.

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