A popular Democrat talking point for many years has been the contention that the gun industry maintains some sort of unique, protective "immunity" against legal consequences, one that is not enjoyed by any other industry in the country.
Here is Joe Biden this very week making that allegation:
We should repeal the liability shield that often protects gun manufacturers from being sued for the death and destruction caused by their weapons. They're the only industry in this country that has that kind of immunity. ...
The gun industry's special protections are outrageous. It must end.
These statements about "special protections" are lies, and Joe Biden tells them so easily and so effortlessly only because Democrats have been lying about this for a long time. These are false claims and there is absolutely no truth to them.
The "liability shield" that gun manufacturers enjoy is actually materially no different than that enjoyed by essentially every manufacturer of every single consumer product in the country. The law—known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act—simply "prohibit[s] civil liability actions from being brought or continued against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages, injunctive or other relief resulting from the misuse of their products by others."
In laymen's terms, that means that gun manufacturers cannot be sued on the grounds that a criminal used that company's weapons to break the law in some way. For instance, if a man uses an ArmaLite rifle to murder a bunch of people in a mass shooting, then ArmaLite itself is shielded from liability for the shooter's criminal misuse of that weapon.
It makes perfect sense: We are not allowed to sue Ford, for instance, if someone drives an F150 while drunk and kills a family in their minivan. Nor are we allowed to sue Dexter Russell if someone goes on a stabbing rampage with one of their knives. A company can't possibly be held liable for the criminal misuse of its lawfully produced product.
Now, you might ask: "Well, if that kind of immunity is standard throughout the consumer industry, why did we need to single out the gun industry for special protection?"
The obvious answer, of course, is that the gun industry is a unique target for this kind of weaponized litigation, and without the specific carve-out in federal law, gun manufacturers would be inundated with fraudulent, time-consuming, expensive lawsuits brought by zealous gun control activists. The law was necessary to save the gun industry from the very kind of targeted suits for which Joe Biden and Democrats are explicitly advocating.
They want your guns. They're going to try and get them any way they can. It's that simple. Don't be fooled.
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