The Anti-PLCAA Playbook: How 8 States Are Routing Around Federal Law to Target Gun Owners in 2026
The 2026 Glock ban wave isn’t a Glock story. It is a story about a twenty-year-old federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act — PLCAA for short — and the eight state legislatures running the anti-PLCAA playbook to route around it.
Last week, Illinois’s House Gun Violence Prevention Committee passed HB4471 along party lines on May 20. Around the same time, New Jersey’s Attorney General sent administrative subpoenas to fifteen federally licensed firearms dealers demanding ten years of Glock buyer records. And Minnesota’s lawsuit against Glock Inc. and its Austrian parent survived a motion to dismiss in Hennepin County. Three states. One target on paper. But the strategy behind all three actions is the same — and it has been building since 2021. It is the anti-PLCAA playbook. Eight states have now adopted some version of it, and a ninth comes online in five weeks.
This piece is the federal-law companion to yesterday’s GunsAndGadgetsDaily.com explainer on what the three state actions actually do to Glock owners. If you read that one and walked away wondering how Illinois can ban the sale of a firearm Glock has been selling for forty years, or how New Jersey can subpoena ten years of legal-purchase records, the answer is the same: each of those states first passed a state law designed to neutralize a federal one. That federal law is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005, known almost universally by its acronym, PLCAA. And the strategy of writing state laws designed to slip through PLCAA’s exceptions is what 2A litigators now call the anti-PLCAA playbook.
Why the 2026 Glock ban wave is a PLCAA story
The reason the same theory keeps showing up in different states isn’t coincidence. It is a coordinated litigation and legislative strategy that traces back to a single legal problem: from 2005 forward, PLCAA shut down the wave of civil lawsuits cities and crime victims had been filing against firearm manufacturers in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Those lawsuits sought to hold the industry liable for criminal misuse of lawfully sold products — the same theory once tried against tobacco and automakers. PLCAA stopped them cold by establishing federal immunity for lawful firearm sales and marketing, with a narrow set of exceptions.
The anti-PLCAA playbook is the answer the gun-control movement built over the next sixteen years: write state laws that fit through PLCAA’s exceptions, then file suit under those state laws. The IL HB4471 design-defect framing, the NJ subpoena demand, and the Minnesota public-nuisance theory are not three different ideas. They are the same idea, deployed in three different forms.
What PLCAA actually does (and the six exceptions it carves out)
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act — codified at 15 U.S.C. §§7901–7903, originally S.397 in the 109th Congress — was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2005. The statute bars most civil actions brought against federally licensed manufacturers and sellers of firearms or ammunition for damages or other relief resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a qualified product by a third party.
In plain language: if a criminal misuses a lawfully manufactured and lawfully sold firearm, the manufacturer and the seller are not liable in tort for the criminal’s act. That immunity is broad — but it is not absolute. Congress carved out six explicit exceptions. A civil action is allowed when:
- The seller transferred a firearm to a person knowing it would be used in a crime of violence or drug trafficking (negligent-entrustment-style).
- The seller violated a statute applicable to the sale or marketing of firearms and that violation was a proximate cause of the harm — the predicate exception.
- The seller is sued for breach of contract or warranty in connection with the firearm.
- The seller’s product was defective in design or manufacture (when used as intended).
- The action is brought by the U.S. or any state for enforcement of certain federal laws.
- The action involves a death proximately caused by the discharge of a firearm that the defendant aided and abetted in violation of federal law.
Each exception is narrow on its face. But one exception — the predicate exception — turned out to have a hidden door. That door is what the eight anti-PLCAA states walked through.
The predicate exception — the one anti-PLCAA states are exploiting
The predicate exception allows a lawsuit when the seller has knowingly violated a state or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product. The Senate report defines it as encompassing three categories: statutes that expressly regulate firearms; statutes that courts have applied to the sale and marketing of firearms; and statutes that don’t expressly regulate firearms but that clearly can be said to implicate the purchase and sale of firearms.
For sixteen years after PLCAA passed, federal courts mostly read this exception narrowly. General public-nuisance laws — the kind of common-law nuisance statute every state has on its books — were repeatedly held to be outside the predicate exception. The argument was that PLCAA’s entire purpose would be defeated if any general nuisance law could swallow the immunity.
Then states started writing nuisance laws specifically targeting the firearm industry. The theory: if a state passes a statute that explicitly regulates firearm marketing and sales as a public nuisance, that statute might fit through the predicate exception by its own terms.
That is the entire anti-PLCAA playbook in one sentence.
The anti-PLCAA playbook — 8 states, one strategy
The eight states currently operating under some version of an anti-PLCAA law, with effective dates, are below. A ninth — Virginia — comes online on July 1, 2026.
NY, NJ, DE, CA — public-nuisance “reasonable controls” laws
New York — N.Y. General Business Law §898, effective July 6, 2021. The first of its kind. Created a private right of action against any “gun industry member” who “knowingly or recklessly” markets, sells, or distributes a firearm in a way that endangers the public. The Second Circuit upheld the law in 2025 in NSSF v. James, finding it fits through PLCAA’s predicate exception.
New Jersey — effective July 5, 2022. NJ’s “Gun Industry Accountability Act” mirrors the NY model and is the legal foundation for the May 2026 subpoenas to fifteen FFLs demanding ten years of Glock buyer records. A federal district court initially blocked the NJ law as “in direct conflict with PLCAA,” but the litigation continues on appeal. The AG’s office filed its public-nuisance suit against Glock in 2025 and is now seeking dealer records to support that theory.
Delaware — effective June 30, 2022. Modeled on NY GBL §898 with a state cause of action against industry members for “unreasonable” conduct in the sale and marketing of firearms.
California — the “Firearm Industry Responsibility Act” (AB 1594), 2022. Modeled on the NY-NJ framework. Provides a state cause of action for any “reasonable controls” violation by a firearm industry member that proximately causes harm.
HI, WA, IL, MD — gun industry accountability statutes
Hawaii — effective July 1, 2023. Permits civil actions against gun industry members for violations of state “reasonable precautions” standards.
Washington — effective July 23, 2023. Public-nuisance framework permitting AG and private actions against industry members.
Illinois — effective August 14, 2023. The Firearm Industry Responsibility Act. This is the existing state-law foundation onto which HB4471 (the “Glock ban bill” that passed committee on May 20, 2026) is now being added.
Maryland — the Gun Industry Accountability Act (GIAA), effective June 1, 2024. The basis for Maryland and Baltimore City v. Glock, filed in February 2025. The state argues Glock’s cruciform-trigger design facilitates conversion via aftermarket auto-sears (“Glock switches”) and that selling pistols with that design is a violation of Maryland’s reasonable-controls standard.
Virginia — effective July 1, 2026 (the newest)
Virginia — enacted April 10, 2026, effective July 1, 2026. Modeled on the NY-NJ public-nuisance + reasonable-controls framework. Virginia’s law expands the playbook into a ninth jurisdiction in five weeks and adds a state with a meaningful firearm-manufacturing footprint to the litigation map.
How the three-state Glock wave fits the pattern
Once the eight-state map is on the page, the May 2026 Glock-targeting cluster reads differently:
- Illinois HB4471 — a state statute that defines “convertible pistol” in a way that catches every striker-fired Glock-pattern handgun and bans its sale and transfer. It sits on top of Illinois’s 2023 anti-PLCAA framework and gives state plaintiffs a fresh predicate to argue.
- New Jersey’s 15-FFL subpoenas — an enforcement action under New Jersey’s 2022 Gun Industry Accountability law. The records demand exists because the public-nuisance theory requires showing how the manufacturer’s sale and distribution patterns enabled criminal misuse. Ten years of dealer records is the evidentiary base for that theory.
- Minnesota’s Hennepin County lawsuit — State v. Glock, Case No. 27-CV-24-18827, filed December 12, 2024. The complaint advances the same “ready convertibility as design defect” theory now being tested in MD and is the legal proving ground for whether courts will permit the host firearm itself to be treated as a public nuisance.
Each of the three actions is a different mechanism — legislation, enforcement, litigation. All three share the anti-PLCAA strategic frame. None of the three needs to defeat PLCAA on its face. Each one only needs to slip through the predicate exception, narrowly construed.
The first federal wall — PLCAA preemption and NSSF v. James
The federal counter-strategy has one immediate test and one structural test. The immediate test is NSSF v. James, currently pending at the U.S. Supreme Court as Docket No. 25-198. The National Shooting Sports Foundation petitioned for certiorari in early 2026 after the Second Circuit upheld New York’s anti-PLCAA statute. The NRA filed an amicus brief on March 30, 2026, urging the Court to hear the case.
The NSSF petition presents a circuit split. The Second Circuit reads the predicate exception broadly — a state-passed statute targeting firearm marketing and sales fits through the exception if it is “applicable to” the industry. The Ninth and D.C. Circuits read the exception narrowly — PLCAA’s structural purpose forecloses an interpretation that would let the exception swallow the rule. Last year’s Supreme Court decision in Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos instructed lower courts to be skeptical of predicate-exception theories that would functionally defeat the statute.
If the Supreme Court grants cert in NSSF v. James and rules for the NSSF, the eight-state playbook collapses or shrinks dramatically. If the Court denies cert or rules against NSSF, the playbook expands.
That is the immediate federal test. The structural test is older and broader.
The second federal wall — Bruen text, history, and tradition
In New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, 597 U.S. 1 (2022), the Supreme Court established the operative test for any modern firearm regulation: the government must demonstrate that the regulation is consistent with the United States’ historical tradition of firearm regulation. The Bruen test removed the means-end-scrutiny balancing tests lower courts had been using and replaced them with a text-history-and-tradition inquiry.
For the anti-PLCAA playbook, Bruen sits in the background of every state public-nuisance claim that also functions as a possession-style restriction on a category of firearms. HB4471 doesn’t criminalize possession on its face — but its sale-and-transfer ban functions as a constructive ban on the future acquisition of an entire class of handguns. That implicates Bruen directly.
And the historical record is thin. There is no founding-era or Reconstruction-era analogue for banning a host firearm because of an aftermarket part the manufacturer doesn’t make and didn’t sell. The Firearms Policy Coalition has filed amicus briefs in the Minnesota litigation making exactly this argument: under Bruen, a state cannot ban a lawful firearm sale on the theory that someone else, after the sale, might illegally modify it.
Bruen and PLCAA are independent federal walls. To defeat both, a state law has to survive both a Bruen-style historical analogue review and a PLCAA preemption challenge. The anti-PLCAA states are betting they can clear one or both. They have not, yet, cleared both in any reported decision.
Where the courts have already pushed back
Despite the Second Circuit’s 2025 ruling for New York, federal courts have not given the playbook a clean win. Several decisions cut the other way:
- New Jersey district court (2023) — blocked the NJ anti-PLCAA law as “in direct conflict” with PLCAA. The ruling was appealed and the litigation is still active, but the district court’s reasoning is the cleanest federal articulation of the preemption argument.
- Hartford v. Glock (Connecticut, 2024) — dismissed on PLCAA preemption grounds; the court held that Connecticut’s general public-nuisance law was not a “statute applicable to” firearm sales within the predicate exception.
- Pennsylvania Supreme Court (2024) — upheld PLCAA preemption against a Pennsylvania municipality’s nuisance lawsuit. NSSF praised the decision as a faithful reading of congressional intent.
- Smith & Wesson v. Mexico (U.S. Supreme Court, 2024) — unanimous ruling rejecting Mexico’s PLCAA-exception theory in a case brought against U.S. manufacturers. The Court reaffirmed that PLCAA’s structural purpose constrains how broadly the predicate exception can be read.
The trend in federal courts that have squarely confronted the question is preemption. The playbook’s remaining viability rides on the Second Circuit’s outlier reading of the predicate exception — which is exactly the reading the Supreme Court could now resolve in NSSF v. James.
What gun owners and 2A defenders should do this week
First, know your state. If you live in one of the eight anti-PLCAA states (or Virginia, starting July 1), you live under a legal framework that puts the firearm industry — and by extension, the legal market for the firearms you own — under a state-law cause of action your federal lawmakers spent twenty years trying to foreclose. That posture matters to how state courts will interpret enforcement actions, subpoenas, and proposed bans.
Second, support the federal cases. NSSF v. James is the single most consequential PLCAA test in the docket. The cert petition is supported by amicus briefs from the NRA-ILA, the Firearms Policy Coalition, Gun Owners of America, and the Second Amendment Foundation. Member-supported funding is what these briefs run on.
Third, comment on the federal record. ATF’s 34-rule reform package is in its public-comment window through August 4. Federal-register comments become part of the administrative record courts review. A Bruen-era court reading the record will see what the regulated public actually said. Saying nothing is its own contribution to the record.
Fourth, use your civic-action toolkit. Our Civic Toolkit System has the framework for tracking your state’s legislative calendar, identifying your state representatives, and filing comments and emails that count. None of the eight anti-PLCAA states passed their laws in a vacuum. Each one had a window where contact volume to lawmakers mattered. Virginia’s law takes effect in five weeks. There are seven more state legislatures considering similar bills right now.
Fifth, read the companion piece. Yesterday’s GunsAndGadgetsDaily breakdown walks the owner-impact side of the same story — what HB4471, the NJ subpoenas, and the Minnesota lawsuit actually do to the Glock 19 in your safe. The legal architecture above is the why. The owner impact is the what.
Frequently asked questions
What is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA)?
PLCAA is a 2005 federal statute, codified at 15 U.S.C. §§7901–7903, that bars most civil lawsuits against federally licensed firearm and ammunition manufacturers and sellers seeking damages for the criminal misuse of their lawfully sold products by third parties. Congress passed it after a wave of late-1990s and early-2000s municipal lawsuits sought to hold the firearm industry liable in tort for criminal misuse, on a theory borrowed from tobacco litigation.
What is the “predicate exception” to PLCAA?
The predicate exception is one of six narrow exceptions to PLCAA’s immunity. It permits a lawsuit when the seller has knowingly violated a state or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of firearms, and that violation was a proximate cause of the harm. State anti-PLCAA laws are written to be the statute referenced in the predicate exception — the entire strategy is to create a state law that fits through the exception by its own terms.
Which states have passed anti-PLCAA laws?
As of May 2026, eight states have anti-PLCAA laws in effect: New York (2021), New Jersey (2022), Delaware (2022), California (2022), Hawaii (2023), Washington (2023), Illinois (2023), and Maryland (2024). Virginia’s anti-PLCAA law takes effect July 1, 2026, bringing the total to nine.
What is NSSF v. James?
NSSF v. James (U.S. Supreme Court Docket No. 25-198) is the National Shooting Sports Foundation’s petition for certiorari challenging New York’s anti-PLCAA statute, N.Y. General Business Law §898. The Second Circuit upheld the New York law in 2025, finding it fits through PLCAA’s predicate exception. NSSF’s petition argues the Second Circuit’s reading conflicts with narrower constructions in the Ninth and D.C. Circuits and would, if allowed to stand, let the exception swallow PLCAA itself. The case is the single most consequential PLCAA test currently in the docket.
Does the Bruen test apply to state anti-PLCAA laws?
Indirectly but importantly. Anti-PLCAA laws themselves create civil causes of action rather than directly restricting possession, which puts them outside the textbook Bruen inquiry. But when an anti-PLCAA framework is paired with a sale-and-transfer ban (as in Illinois HB4471) or a design-defect theory that functionally removes a class of firearm from the lawful market (as in Maryland and Minnesota), the resulting restriction implicates Bruen. Plaintiffs must then show a historical analogue at the founding or 14th Amendment ratification for the kind of restriction the state is imposing. For aftermarket-part-based restrictions on host firearms, no such historical analogue exists in the reported case law.
The bigger picture
PLCAA is twenty years old. The anti-PLCAA playbook is sixteen years younger and gaining ground. The 2026 Glock ban wave — Illinois HB4471, the New Jersey subpoenas, the Minnesota lawsuit — isn’t three new ideas. It is the same idea, deployed simultaneously in three different forms, against the same target, by states operating from the same legal playbook. Recognizing that pattern is the first step in stopping it.
The federal walls are real. PLCAA preemption has worked when courts have read the predicate exception narrowly. Bruen has worked when courts have demanded historical analogues. NSSF v. James could harden both walls if the Supreme Court takes the case and reads PLCAA the way Congress wrote it. And federal-court precedent already runs against the broadest readings of the anti-PLCAA playbook in the New Jersey district court, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, the federal court in Connecticut, and the U.S. Supreme Court’s Mexico decision.
None of those wins are self-executing. Each one was the product of organized 2A litigation funded by member dues and amicus briefs filed at the right time. Virginia’s anti-PLCAA law takes effect in five weeks. The Supreme Court will signal on NSSF v. James in the next several months. The state of play in May 2026 is set. What it looks like in November is up to the rights-literate citizens who actually engage with it.
Eight states wrote a playbook. The federal walls are still standing. The next move is ours.
By James Nicholas · Updated May 28, 2026. James Nicholas covers 2A policy, NFA reform, and firearms litigation across the Brand Avalanche Media network. Follow him at @therealxdman.
