Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act
Rachel Maddow pointed out last night that some advertising for guns in the US frames it as a matter of combat, and that there is no such thing as “combat” in civilian life.
Maybe this jury in Connecticut will find that you can't market weapons like this to civilians for combat use in civilian life, because in civilian life there is no such thing as legal combat use. pic.twitter.com/3efjOYYq3J
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) March 15, 2019
Her source for the images may have been Mother Jones, which showed us some in 2012:
She went on to point out that normally consumer products that cause death and injury tend to lead to lawsuits, except for this one industry that is protected by law.
There is a very specific reason it's been impossible to hold gun manufacturers accountable following America's epidemic of mass shootings. It's because the gun industry alone, among all American industry, the gun industry alone has special immunity. pic.twitter.com/jDbq7JxiXt
— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) March 15, 2019
Background from the Giffords Law Center:
Civil liability plays an important role in injury prevention. In circumstances where legislators have been unwilling to enact regulations to improve safety, dangerous products and careless industry practices are normally held in check by the possibility of civil litigation that enables injured individuals to recover monetarily. This principle does not apply to the gun industry, however, because it has obtained unprecedented immunity from this longstanding system of accountability.
Immunity statutes grant legal protection to gun manufacturers and dealers, shielding them from liability for a wide range of conduct. Similar immunity laws have been adopted in some form by the federal government and 34 states.
A series of lawsuits in the 1990s held certain members of the firearms industry liable for particularly reckless practices. As a result, the industry began to push legislation in statehouses that limited this avenue of relief. Then, in 2005, after intense lobbying from the gun industry, Congress enacted and President Bush signed a law that gives gun manufacturers and sellers unprecedented nationwide immunity from lawsuits.
In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA)1, a federal statute which provides broad immunity to gun manufacturers and dealers in federal and state court. Generally speaking, the PLCAA prohibits “qualified civil liability actions,” which are defined as civil or administrative proceedings which “result from the criminal or lawful misuse” of firearms or ammunition.2
Yesterday the Connecticut Supreme Court issued a ruling:
The Connecticut Supreme Court Thursday narrowly reversed a ruling by a lower court judge dismissing a lawsuit by the families of victims of the Sandy Hook shooting against Remington Arms Company, allowing the case to proceed.
In a 4-3 decision the court remanded the landmark gun case back to Bridgeport Superior Court and possibly created a path that other mass shooting victims can follow to get around the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, known as PLCAA, which has protected the manufacturers of the AR-15 assault rifle from lawsuits.
The ruling paves the way for the families to subpoena internal documents on how the gun companies have marketed the AR-15, which has become the weapon of choice for mass shooters. The gun manufacturers have closely guarded information on how they market the assault weapons.
In short: gun companies market their guns as being just the thing for mass shootings, and there is a law protecting them alone among manufacturers from lawsuits. That’s fucked up, as a couple of mosques in Christchurch are the latest reminder.
It’s nice to see that at least they had a nice cross-section of American society in the Oval Office to witness the signing of the bill.
I know. Maddow had an acid quip about that.
I can kind of see the point being made, but in most cases where a product ends up killing someone, it’s because the product or industry practice has failed in some unexpectedly dangerous way. The solution is to make the product or practice more robust and less likely to fail in a dangerous manner.
Guns are different because when they kill someone, they’re working as intended. That’s not what product liability law is for.
That’s not to say that guns shouldn’t be banned or that gun manufacturer’s aren’t evil – it just feels to me like this is the wrong way to approach the problem.
But if you take a wider view it can make a kind of sense, I think: “dangerous products and careless industry practices are normally held in check by the possibility of civil litigation that enables injured individuals to recover monetarily.” You can make a dangerous product and be very careful about, for instance, how you market. it. The gun industry doesn’t have to market guns as being for combat.
Karellen, I think another analogy might be the ability to sue bartenders when they continue to serve drinks to a person who is already drunk and that person drives and kills or maims someone. In this case, the alcohol is working as intended in getting the imbiber drunk. The bartender is working as expected in most businesses and giving the customer what they want and are willing/able to pay for. But the bartender can still face criminal charges.
I wondered what on earth they could mean by ‘adaptive.’ And then I read the tiny print.
‘Mission?’ ‘extended-range duty?’ The intended market is pretty blatantly pseudo-military lunatics.
For another example: since around 1900, all revolvers incorporated safety devices which prevented them from firing if dropped. ‘Hammer the hammer’ was the advertising slogan of the company that introduced the feature. Every maker immediately copied it.
BUT, in the 1950s Ruger began making deliberately retro ‘Olde West’ style revolvers without this basic feature. They were never held accountable for such a reckless hazard.