An Official Journal Of The NRA | Debunking Myths About the Big, Bad Gun Industry
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Debunking Myths About the Big, Bad Gun Industry
by Amy Swearer
posted on September 26, 2022
Just like any other industry, gun companies have always advertised the innovations of their products. Now, gun-control advocates accuse gun manufacturers of purposely producing ads that cater to criminals.
A decades-old gun-control narrative has been resurging in recent months, sweeping across the national scene in everything from celebrity Twitter accounts to The Atlantic magazine articles to congressional hearings.
The story’s plotline goes something like this: The gun industry is a nefarious actor that profits off of the “gun violence” it facilitates by marketing its lethal products to other bad actors. This industry is this generation’s “Big Tobacco,” waging a deadly disinformation campaign on the American public, but Congress gave it special protections from civil liability so it can’t be held accountable for any wrongdoing. We need to repeal these protections, sue the gun manufacturers and sellers into oblivion (or at least into compliance with our preferred gun-control policies) and force them to “foot the bill” for “gun violence,” just like we made tobacco companies compensate states for smoking-related medical costs.
This narrative makes for a great bedtime story in gun-control circles; it comes complete with a villainous troll blocking the bridge to “common-sense gun safety,” which must be slain for the good of the nation.
Except, like most bedtime stories, this narrative is full of mythical elements. And it’s far past time for the adults in the room to discern fact from gun-control fiction.
Myth #1: Congress gave the gun industry special protections that make it completely immune from all liability.
It is true that in 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) to prevent some types of lawsuits from being brought against gun manufacturers and sellers. But it is not at all true that this law, passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, completely immunizes the gun industry from all civil liability. All the PLCAA does is prevent lawsuits against gun manufacturers and sellers seeking to hold them liable for harm caused by third parties who used the guns in an unlawful manner. Members of the gun industry can still be held liable for a whole host of widely recognized tort claims, such as selling defective products, making false advertisements and failing to abide by the numerous state and federal laws regarding product safety, sales and record-keeping.
The explicit protection against liability for third-party actions is uncommon, but not unique or necessarily broad compared to protections received by other industries; for example, Section 230 generally gives internet service providers immunity from defamation and copyright infringement claims over content (such as comments, articles or videos) created and posted by third-party users. After 9/11, Congress passed several laws protecting the airline industry and its employees from civil liability for reporting suspicious behavior to law-enforcement officials and protecting passengers and crew members from lawsuits over actions taken during in-flight emergencies. And the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act of 1986 and the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act of 2005 provide vaccine manufacturers and distributors with incredibly broad immunity from liability for any and all harms caused by their products.
Finally, to whatever extent the PLCAA does offer the gun industry some unique set of protections, it is because the industry was faced with a unique set of threats. The PLCAA was a direct response to a concerted effort by gun-control advocates to keep firearm manufacturers and sellers perpetually bogged down in frivolous-but-expensive lawsuits, with the hopes that they would eventually just agree to cave to the advocates’ policy demands. In this way, activists could strong-arm the industry into “voluntarily” adopting measures that the gun-control groups couldn’t get passed into law, either because of a lack of popular support or because they would be just flat-out unconstitutional. Congress stepped in to block this abusive litigation from occurring, but did not block any other type of standard consumer protection or common-law tort action.
Myth #2: The gun industry makes enormous profits off of criminal violence and should therefore be forced to “foot the bill” for its costs.
Gun manufacturers and sellers make money because they sell products that millions of ordinary, law-abiding Americans want to buy. In this case, the firearms and ammunition they sell also enable these Americans to exercise their fundamental constitutional right to keep and bear arms, which, in turn, allows them to more-effectively defend themselves and others from criminals who would harm them.
Many politicians and gun-control advocates decry the fact that the gun industry, like every industry, aims to be profitable, even though their products (like virtually all products) can be misused. But at the end of the day, gun manufacturers and sellers who comply with federal law are not the ones inflicting harm on innocent people. They should not be scapegoated for the actions of criminals, many of whom broke the law to illegally obtain their firearms from illegitimate channels.