The Hard Truth About Suing Gun Manufacturers

Andrew R. Kloster, Jennifer Weinberg

Politics, United States

It is wrong to falsely penalize manufacturers for producing a functional product that was lawful for them to sell.

Could you imagine being a business owner; selling a legal, functional product; and being sued every time an individual who buys your product uses it to commit a crime?

Should a rope manufacturer be liable when someone is hanged by that rope? Should a knife manufacturer be liable when someone is stabbed? Could a restaurant be sued when someone eats its perfectly safe food but dies of a heart attack or diabetic shock?

In each of these cases, the product being sold is legal, and it works. And in each of these cases, we don’t think the manufacturer should be held responsible for damage that comes from using a safe product as advertised. But some activists think gun manufacturers and retailers should be held to a different standard.

Families of the Sandy Hook massacre filed a lawsuit in response to the 2012 shooting, attempting to hold gun manufacturers liable for the deaths of school children and faculty. That shooting involved Adam Lanza using a rifle his mother, Mary Lanza, had legally purchased. The lawsuit charges the gun manufacturer, gun distributor and local gun shop that sold Mary Lanza her rifle with “unreasonable and egregious risk of physical injury to others” and seeks damages.

Now, Judge Barbara Bellis of the Connecticut Superior Court must decide if federal law blocks the lawsuit. Back in 2005, Congress passed, and President George W. Bush signed into law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which preempts—or blocks—state or federal lawsuits against gun manufacturers except in limited cases, such as where the guns were defective, or where the manufacturer was involved in criminal conduct.

This federal law makes sense and simply reiterates what is already well-established products liability law. For a manufacturer or retailer to be liable in tort for the harm caused by a product, the plaintiff must establish that the manufacturer or retailer did something that actually caused the harm.