The state of California has now passed a law that supposedly opens the door to lawsuits against the firearm industry.

All of this is predicated on blaming the gun companies’ marketing for the misuse of their products. It’s an insane position, to be sure, but so far it’s the only in the anti-gun side has been able to find.

Yet in their coverage of it, the anti-gun site The Trace gave their story a headline that reads, “California Law Will Make It Easier to Sue the Gun Industry for Negligence.”

California enacts law that will make it easier to sue the gun industry for negligence. Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1594, which creates a gun industry “standard of conduct” and allows residents, the state Department of Justice, and local governments to sue companies for violating that standard. The code requires gun companies to implement safeguards meant to help prevent illegal gun trafficking and restrict commerce of gun products deemed “abnormally dangerous.” Like a New York law passed last year, the California law paves the way for suits against gunmakers that can sidestep their federal liability protections. It is set to take effect on July 1, 2023, but is expected to draw legal challenges from gun rights groups. Two weeks ago, Newsom also signed bills strengthening restrictions against ghost guns and restricting the marketing of guns to minors, which gun rights groups challenged in court last week.

Except that it has nothing to do with negligence.

After all, under current federal law, negligence by gun companies could be met with lawsuits. That includes failure to follow the laws regarding the sale and transportation of firearms. That was already on the table.

What the law does is present a pile of rules that were created by anti-gun zealots and then seeks to open the door on allowing these companies to be sued for supposed failures to adhere to those rules. It’s nothing more than an attempt to blame the gun industry for the misdeeds of other people.

There’s absolutely no negligence required for that.

But this is The Trace. While they generally like to pretend they’re journalists first and foremost, the truth is that they’re really just anti-gun activists who try and pretend to be journalists. This is a prime example of just what we’re talking about.

They know that the gun companies already had to adhere to federal regulations on gun sales and transportation. They know that those companies aren’t selling guns directly to people without them going through an FFL holder. All of that is obvious to them because, if the companies were, someone would be getting prosecuted.

Yet they still present this as if this is really about some supposed “negligence” when they have to know otherwise.

Then again, The Trace isn’t really interested in the facts, just advancing their preferred narrative as if it were fact.

I’m not really sure why they exist, though, because it’s not like the mainstream media doesn’t do that just fine, but here we are nonetheless.