Tennessee Governor Signs Bill Strengthening Gun Industry Protections

With lawfare resuming against the firearm industry throughout the country, all based on absolute nonsense, there’s a lot that needs to be done to combat it. It’s one thing to legitimately take issue with something a gun company does wrong, but the current course of action by the anti-gunners just tries to use that exception to attack them for what a third party did.

It shouldn’t happen, which I’ve already talked about once today.

Yet the truth is that what should and shouldn’t happen aren’t nearly as important as what is happening, and lawfare is a thing.

Luckily, Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee just signed a bill that might make that a whole lot harder for some people.

Republican Governor Bill Lee officially made it harder to sue gun makers in the Volunteer State this week.

On Monday, he signed SB1360 into law after it passed the House by a vote of 72 to 20 and the Senate 26 to 6. That bill explicitly forbids liability lawsuits against industry members where there isn’t a viable claim the company’s actions directly caused the claimed harms. It also requires anyone who tries to enforce an out-of-state judgment against a Tennessee company based on claims the state doesn’t allow to pay the company three times the judgment, as well as refund its legal fees.

“To protect the individual right to keep and bear arms, as guaranteed by both the constitution of this state and the United States Constitution, by fostering a robust marketplace to ensure ready access to arms and accompanying accoutrements, it is the public policy of this state not to allow recovery against a dealer, manufacturer, or seller of a qualified product for qualified civil liability actions or other causes of action resulting from or relating to the criminal or unlawful misuse of qualified products by third parties, public nuisance or market share theories of liability, or any other theory of liability not recognized by the laws of this state,” the law reads.

The law is the latest development in the nationwide fight over gun company liability. That fight has persisted since the 1990s despite Congress passing the Lawful Protection of Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) in 2004, which limits what kind of liability suits can be brought against gun makers. Gun-control activists have worked on ways to pierce the PLCAA’s veil of protection ever since, with some success in cases like the Sandy Hook families’ settlement with Remington.

The NSSF and NRA celebrated the victory, and for good reason. The truth is that we need laws like this in all 50 states, though that’s a pipe dream. It’s never going to happen because California, New York, Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, among others, exist.

But it still should.

That said, Tennessee at least did it, and other pro-gun states should do this as well. I fail to see one reason why even a state like Florida, where far too many Republicans like to listen to anti-gunners and pretend it’s a Republican position to oppose gun rights, can get away without at least having a serious debate on a bill like this.

It might not stop lawfare efforts entirely, but it will slow them down to some degree.

The fact that it’s going to make Tennessee a lot more attractive to gun manufacturers is something that’s not lost on me and likely isn’t lost on anyone else with a functioning brain.