NSSF Celebrates 20th Anniversary of Protection of Lawfull Commerce in Arms Act

One of the dumbest things I’ve ever heard, even back when I was a pretty liberal and stupid teenager, was the idea of suing gun manufacturers for the actions of others. That’s essentially what happened when anti-gun groups decided to file a lawsuit against a gun company because some criminals shot someone else with a gun they generally didn’t buy legally in the first place.

And it was a common tactic for a long time. The goal was likely to make it so expensive to sell guns to the general public that they’d simply stop. You don’t need to curtail the Second Amendment through legislation or judicial action if no one is willing to sell guns, after all.

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act put an end to much of that. It allows lawsuits for defective guns, of course, but you can’t just sue a gun company simply because a bad guy used one of their guns unless you can show the company actually did something wrong.

And that law is now 20 years old, which the NSSF is pretty happy about.

The Firearm Industry Trade Association – celebrates the 20-year anniversary of the enactment of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). The PLCAA is the bipartisan law passed by Congress and signed into law on October 26, 2005, by former President George W. Bush that protects the firearm industry from frivolous lawsuits attempting to hold highly-regulated and lawful firearm businesses liable for the criminal misuse of lawfully sold firearms by remote third parties. The PLCAA, at its core, ensures that the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms can be exercised by law-abiding Americans.

“Americans cannot exercise their God-given right to purchase, possess and use firearms without a strong and present industry that provides the means to acquire those firearms. The firearm industry is comprised of more than 400,000 hardworking men and women who take immense pride in providing safe and reliable products for Americans to purchase if and when they choose to do so,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act has ensured that this Constitutional right has not been bankrupted out of existence by gun control activists and those bent on eliminating the right of law-abiding Americans to keep and bear arms.”

…

While the PLCAA has been incredibly successful in protecting the firearm industry from frivolous lawsuits, the PLCAA is constantly under attack. In recent years, several states have attempted to defy the will of Congress by codifying the same strained tort theories in statutes providing that industry members are subjected to ill-defined “reasonable controls” standards for public nuisance. For example, displeased with Congress’ judgment, New York passed a law in 2021 to, in then-Governor Andrew Cuomo’s own words, “reinstate the public nuisance liability for gun manufacturers” that states tried to impose two decades ago, in an avowed effort to “right the wrong done 16 years [earlier]” when Congress enacted the PLCAA. While we celebrate the anniversary of this landmark legislation, we remain vigilant in defending the PLCAA from ongoing threats.

Another way the PLCAA is being undermined is via lawsuits that target gun companies’ advertising campaigns. The claim is that their ads are somehow reaching out to would-be mass killers and marketing to their homicidal desires. The fact that most of the laws that allow this don’t require anyone to prove the shooters even saw the marketing is especially problematic, but even if they did, these strategies have been in place for decades, and millions of guns are sold each year, of which only a tiny, tiny fraction of a percent are used for a massacre.

If the marketing is for mass killers, then it sucks at creating them.

Still, the PLCAA is a massive with for gun rights in this country, and it thwarts a lot of what anti-gunners have long tried to do. This is the law that held the line against Mexico’s attempt to bankrupt the firearm industry in this country for good. That failed at the Supreme Court in a massive win for gun rights, far more massive than I expected to ever see.

Here’s to another few hundred decades of the PLCAA.

Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.

Help us continue to report the truth about the Schumer Shutdown. Use promo code POTUS47 to get 74% off your VIP membership.