The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was created because anti-gunners were growing firearm manufacturers in lawsuits. These suits had nothing to do with the actions of these companies. It was because of the actions of third parties, many of whom obtained guns illegally and then used them to hurt others.
It wasn’t about justice. These lawsuits were about either shutting down the manufacturers or pressuring them to stop selling to private individuals.
The PLCAA was created to put a stop to it. While most other industries don’t have such protections, as anti-gunners love to point out, most other industries don’t need this kind of protection.
Yet the lawsuit against Remington, where it was alleged the marketing made the company responsible for Sandy Hook, opened the door for more such lawsuits. Never mind it was an insurance company that settled just to clear the case. Anti-gunners were suddenly encouraged and now these lawsuits are coming out of the woodwork.
And the arguments are equally stupid.
The case arose out of a shooting at a District of Columbia school in which the plaintiffs were injured, perpetrated by a 23-year-old man who committed suicide shortly after. The complaint, framed in negligence and Virginia consumer protection/false advertising statutes, alleged that the defendant manufacturers “have deceptively and unfairly marketed their assault rifles, rifle accessories, and ammunition in ways designed to appeal to the impulsive, risk-taking tendencies of civilian adolescent and post-adolescent males,” and rested on alleged links between the “perverse and pervasive marketing by Defendants and the gun industry at large” and the “idolized self-sufficient warrior mentality” that a “certain subset of youths” develop, that supposedly results in mass shootings. “Upon information and belief,” the plaintiffs claimed the assailant was one of the youths influenced by these marketing practices and that he relied on the defendants’ advertisements in purchasing his weapons in Virginia.
Court filings by defendant Daniel Defense noted that, independent of the PLCAA, dismissal was warranted because, as a threshold matter, there was no “factually plausible or legally cognizable connection” between it and the harm the plaintiffs suffered. “Every link in Plaintiffs’ paper chain of causation is based on mere possibility. Did the Assailant ever see a single Daniel Defense communication? Plaintiffs only speculate. Assuming he saw one, what impact, if any, did it have on him? Again, Plaintiffs only speculate. Assuming he purchased a Daniel Defense product as a result of seeing such a communication, Plaintiffs are still left with no way to cross the chasm between that purchase” and the assailant’s acts. “Instead of factual allegations, or even factual grounds for suspicion, Plaintiffs reply upon nothing more than layer upon layer of assumption and speculation.” Another defendant, FAB Defense, Inc., argued that the plaintiffs failed to specifically allege that any of its products were actually used by the assailant.
These threshold issues of standing and failure to state a claim, as well as the PLCAA, were all factors in Judge Claude M. Hilton’s decision to dismiss the suit.
And dismissing the suit was the right thing to do here.
However, let’s also be real for a moment. Several states have laws specifically permitting lawsuits just like this. These measures specifically note that one doesn’t have to prove the killer ever saw a single advertisement for the product they used. One doesn’t have to prove that the marketing ever reached the killer’s eyes, much less that it inspired any illegal action.
It doesn’t take much to see why this is a massive problem.
I mean, if you’re going to make the case that their marketing is why they’re responsible for a mass murder, then you should be on the hook for proving not just that the bad guy saw the marketing but that there’s no chance they would have committed such an atrocity without it. But that’s not the standard in these states.
The truth is that no one really knows what drives these murders, but blaming the marketing for this is like blaming video games or heavy metal music. It’s something some can latch onto so as to advance a narrative they already wanted to advance. There’s no evidence backing up the claim, and even if there were, it would still be an issue considering there’s never anything to suggest that the killers saw the marketing in the first place.
I’ve noted before that gun marketing is very niche. You don’t see commercials on during prime time television. Unless you’re watching outdoor programming in the first place, you’re never going to see a commercial for any gun company unless you go on YouTube and seek it out. That’s true of most of their marketing, which means that almost anyone who sees an ad for a Daniel Defense rifle is someone likely already looking at gun-related stuff in the first place.
That would suggest that a would-be mass murderer is planning, or at least considering an attack long before he picks up a gun magazine or starts browsing Instagram.
As such, these arguments are absolute nonsense, as are the state laws that enable them.
