Biden: Bring On the B.S. Lawsuits Against Gun Manufacturers

What’s that smell? Infringement!

It’s a mistake to think that former Vice President Joe Biden’s radical antigun campaign stops with the banning and confiscation of AR-15-style rifles and high-capacity magazines. The fact is that the Biden/Harris ticket has a multipronged strategy to end the Right to Keep and Bear Arms as we understand it in America. Part of the way they intend to do that is to force as many gun manufacturers out of business as possible, so that any guns they forgot to ban won’t be available to buy anyway. How do they intend to do that? Well, by immediately repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which keeps people from suing gun manufacturers for making guns that work.

Yes, you read that right.

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to repeal the PLCAA specifically so that anti-gun groups like Everytown can bring frivolous lawsuits against gun makers for making reliable firearms that function exactly as advertised. This would be like suing Honda because your car starts every time. What’s more, the only reason the PLCAA exists is because, before it was passed, anti-gunners had dozens of frivolous lawsuits against most of the major manufacturers.

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his running mate U.S. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) have sworn to eliminate the law that was passed with strong bipartisan support in Congress in 2005.

“Joe Biden and Senator Harris have promised to repeal this law for one single reason. They want to unleash a wave of baseless lawsuits filed by agenda-driven antigun groups and plaintiffs to tie up firearm manufacturers in legal proceedings and bankrupt them through court costs, judgments and penalties,” said Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF Senior Vice President and General Counsel. “The Biden campaign refuses to blame criminals that commit crimes and instead purposefully misleads the public into believing a responsible industry is at fault in order to achieve their gun control agenda. The Biden-Harris plan would allow harassing lawsuits that would be similar to suing Ford for a death caused by a drunk driver.”

Someone light a match in here, please.

The only reason this insanity has been tolerated as long as it has is because anti-gunners have managed to convince many uninformed people that gun manufacturers can’t be sued at all under the PLCAA. This is a lie as frivolous as the lawsuits they want to levy. It is the same campaign tactic employed by Hillary Clinton in 2016, which Politifact labeled “false” four years ago. It is still just as false today.

The PLCAA does not totally exempt firearm manufacturers from all liability. Just like other industries, including auto makers, pharmaceutical companies and others, firearm manufacturers can be held liable for defective products, breach of warranty, criminal misconduct and other behaviors for which they are directly responsible. This is no different from a car company being held liable for defective air bags, but not when a drunk driver kills a pedestrian. Biden knows this but still continues to make his deceptive claims.

Yes, that smell is definitely infringement.

Biden’s plan to roll back PLCAA is in keeping with his admonition during the Democratic primary when he said, “Our enemy is the gun manufacturers.” Biden attacks the industry that produces firearms for the U.S. military, federal, state and local police agencies. It’s the same industry that more than 15.4 million people turned to in order to obtain firearms this year to protect themselves and their family. Nearly 6.2 million have done so for the first time in 2020. Under a Biden administration, the industry that provides the means for tens of millions of law-abiding Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights to protect themselves and their loved ones would be at risk.

David Bronson

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