Anti-gun rights California congressman Adam Schiff (D-Burbank) is one of many big-city politicians eager to use the dead children of Newtown, Connecticut to push new gun control. In this Los Angeles Times article he urges the revival of an old gun control tactic—litigating your enemies to death. He wants to restore the right to drag firearm manufacturers and dealers into court when criminals use their products to commit violent crimes. Such fraudulent lawsuits typically don’t end in a plaintiff verdict, but still the defendants have to spend millions to defend themselves. And bleeding gun manufacturers and dealers is the real goal of these dishonest plaintiffs.
A group of big-city mayors tried suing gun manufacturers out of business a few years ago (see my NRO article about this). Congress promptly stopped this abuse of power, and the big-city anti-gun pols are still fuming. Schiff insists that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act prevents lawsuits against the gun manufacturers for making dangerous products. That is just another deception from the gun control lobby. This law never took away the right to sue gun makers under product liability law, which generally is slanted in favor of plaintiffs and against manufacturers. The law specifically allows suits in cases of people injured due to faulty product design or manufacture, knowingly selling a gun to a prohibited buyer, and other specified exceptions.
Gun control advocates have been frustrated at their inability to accomplish their goals through legislation. Indeed, the public generally opposes any more gun control laws. So the gun controllers are trying once again to use the courts to circumvent the wishes of the people.
—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.