The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was passed in an effort to end frivolous lawsuits against the firearm industry. For those who don't remember the before times, those days were filled with lawsuits against every gun manufacturer there was, and not for their own actions. They were being sued because some punk shot someone else, and that person or their family blamed the company for existing.
That wasn't what was in the filings, of course, but that's really what it boiled down to.
Lawfare is a common enough tactic, and not just in the sense of challenging what's right and wrong. The goal was likely to swamp gun manufacturers with enough lawsuits that they'd just decide to stop selling to the public altogether. Do that enough, and you don't need gun control. Why restrict gun sales if there are no guns anywhere to sell?
The PLCAA put a stop to that.
Well, it did for a time. Following the settlement between survivors of the Sandy Hook shooting and Remington's insurance company, anti-gunners figured they saw a window and started pursuing it. In particular, they started creating laws that would try to pull an end around on the PLCAA.
To say that's being challenged is putting it lightly.
The Second Amendment Foundation, along with the NRA and the Independence Institute, just filed an amicus brief in the National Shooting Sports Federation's challenge of New York's measure.
From a press release:
The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) and its partners have filed an amicus brief urging the Supreme Court to grant certiorari in a case challenging New York’s law that undermines the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
The case, National Shooting Sports Foundation, Inc v. Letitia James, Attorney General of New York, challenges the continued filing of abusive public nuisance lawsuits against firearms manufacturers and dealers. SAF is joined in the amicus filing by the National Rifle Association of America (NRA) and the Independence Institute.
“British efforts to suppress arms commerce in the years before the Revolutionary War were correctly understood by the Founders as a deliberate attempt to disarm and enslave the American people,” said SAF Director of Legal Research and Education Kostas Moros. “Congress enacted the PLCAA to stop the modern equivalent – coordinated litigation campaigns designed to bankrupt the firearms industry through meritless lawsuits. New York’s law invites precisely the kind of abusive end-run around federal protections that Congress sought to prevent. We urge the Court to grant review and reaffirm PLCAA’s vital safeguards for lawful commerce and Second Amendment rights.”
The Second Circuit's erroneous ruling threatens to revive the very litigation campaign that Congress enacted PLCAA to halt, potentially devastating the firearms industry and undermining the constitutional rights it supports.
“This case is essential because it defends the firearms industry against efforts to achieve gun control through the courts rather than through the legislative process,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “SAF is proud to join the NRA and Independence Institute in urging the Supreme Court to protect the industry that enables Americans to exercise their fundamental right to keep and bear arms.”
Let's understand that these laws aren't because gun companies are actually doing anything wrong. This is about them being punished for refusing to bend the knee, among other things.
Glock, for example, is being attacked because it didn't trip over itself to change a proven design just because a third-party device that is illegal to buy, sell, possess, or anything else started becoming more common on American streets. The so-called Glock switches weren't developed by Glock. They're illegal under federal law, and were before they were even finished being developed. They're imported from China or made domestically. It's not Glock's fault.
But they want to punish companies like Glock as some kind of nuisance.
And it doesn't stop there.
This is all about finding as many ways to destroy your access to guns as there are. It's why they're terrified of 3D printed components. If they're successful in somehow forcing the firearm industry to stop selling to the public, then making your own guns becomes the only path toward having a firearm. They want to stop that, too, as we've seen.
This lawsuit matters, and not just because of New York. These laws are becoming a lot more common around the nation, and if they're not put down soon, they could cause irreparable harm to the industry as a whole.
That's the last thing we need.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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