PLCAA Myth

Enjoyable as it is to jokingly liken our political opponents to a cult, the civilian disarmament complex does demonstrate some such behavior. Modern religions pale at the fervor with which anti-gunners spew vile, disgusting rhetoric disguised as innocent activism. Anti-gun acolytes eagerly latch onto factoids that support their conclusions, parroting them uncritically and without context to anyone who will listen—the same flawed arguments persist across generations of gun grabbers. Among the holy proverbs of the church of gun control is the old chestnut that the firearm industry is uniquely and unfairly shielded from legal scrutiny.

Politics is all about optics; gun controllers understand this. Much of their messaging is designed to position the civilian disarmament complex as a grassroots movement working against the odds to topple an evil empire, the so-called “gun lobby.” They position themselves as selflessly and heroically struggling against an enemy they liken to the tobacco barons of the last century. The firearm industry, they say, has used its supposed undue political influence to render itself immune to scrutiny and regulation. Among the favorite examples the church of gun control uses to drive their one-sided narrative is the famous Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).

Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, anti-gun elected officials across the country freely wasted taxpayer money filing civil suits against firearm manufacturers on the basis that criminals killed people with firearms. They openly admitted their intent to destroy the industry by forcing manufacturers and dealers out of business with repeated legal actions on the public’s dime. In response, in 2005, the federal government passed a law with bipartisan support to crack down on such abuses of the justice system. That law, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, does exactly what the name suggests—it outlaws the practice of suing firearm manufacturers and dealers specifically over the criminal misuse of products they sold. In other words, firearm and ammunition companies cannot be sued for damages relating to crimes they did not commit.

Ever since it was signed, PLCAA has been a thorn in the side of major anti-gun groups, who desperately want back the power to engage in the type of unethical behavior the law prohibits. They are so ardent to have it repealed that they have spent nearly two decades openly lying about what it is and what it does, so as to engender public support for their underhanded methods. Everytown for Gun Safety, for example, says on their website that it is a “myth” that “criminals are responsible for their crimes, not the gun industry.” The Giffords Law Center claims that the “gun industry has enjoyed enormous exemptions from liability and accountability.” The industry has “broad immunity… in federal and state court,” agrees the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank. Most arguments against PLCAA are based on the inaccurate claims that its protections are especially broad and unique to the firearm industry.

Much of the popular messaging around PLCAA seems to imply that it renders the firearm industry completely immune to being sued, but anyone who spends more than one minute researching it can disprove this claim. Contrary to the media narrative, PLCAA does not provide “broad legal immunity.” The actual text of the law includes more than a page of exceptions keeping qualified manufacturers open to civil liability above and beyond criminal penalties for violating existing law. Negligent business practices and unsafe products, often cited as examples of the law’s supposed overreach, are specifically listed as perfectly valid grounds for legal action. If a firearm injures someone due to mechanical failure, for example, the company that made it can still be held accountable. Dealers, too, can be compelled to pay damages if they knowingly engage in negligent business practices, such as selling to criminals. Even if a company markets its products in a way that condones or implies unlawful use, it can still be subject to a civil suit. Even the notorious Giffords Law Center grudgingly admits that PLCAA only prohibits lawsuits based on unrelated criminal misuse and that the industry is otherwise open to legal action.

This legal framework is not unique to the firearm industry, either. It is commonly understood in the U.S. legal system that a person or organization can only be held liable for criminal acts of third parties due to negligence. Gas stations are not being sued left and right by victims of arson; Home Depot and Lowe’s have not been repeatedly dragged through court because burglars buy their tools. Any reasonable person understands that no business can control whether consumers use their products for good or ill, so their liability for such misuse is not unlimited. The firearm industry has been subjected to such unfair and dishonest scrutiny simply as another angle from which to drive anti-gun messaging. Why, though, do powerful anti-gun groups and politicians continue to repeat this disproven dogma?

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it,” holds a quote often misattributed to Joseph Goebbels, “people will eventually come to believe it.” Psychologists recognize this phenomenon as the “illusory truth effect,” whereby people can be propagandized to believe almost any sufficiently pervasive “fact,” whether or not it is actually true. Like religious fanatics, members of the civilian disarmament complex disingenuously insist that the playing field between gun control and gun rights is unfair because of the hated PLCAA. It is almost irrelevant at this point whether this myth is perpetuated out of malice by scheming pundits who know it to be false or out of ignorance by their followers; the result is the same. It is intellectually dishonest, grossly irresponsible, and potentially dangerous to our democracy for any self-styled political activist to uncritically repeat a claim without first verifying it to be true. Unfortunately, in this case, it falls on us to fight disinformation.

The popular narrative that PLCAA unfairly and unjustly protects firearm manufacturers must be disproven in the public mind. The law is a common-sense measure passed in response to the very real problem of activist politicians abusing the legal system to harass businesses working in an industry they fear and hate. Anti-gun interests openly broadcast their intentions to have it repealed, thereby opening the floodgates for them to combat gun ownership by killing firearm and ammunition companies with frivolous lawsuits. It has been made abundantly clear that the scheming false prophets of gun control will stop at nothing to achieve their goals, regardless of law and morality.

This is not an isolated issue confined to one facet of the Second Amendment community—it could affect tens of millions of law-abiding citizens in the United States, from hunters to competitive shooters and everyone in between. Laypeople who never grew up around firearms and therefore do not know any better are too often fooled by dishonest messaging that demonizes honest gun owners and the businesses we patronize. It is by duping the uninformed with the PLCAA myth and other persistent lies that anti-gunners gain ground. We must therefore commit ourselves to debunking anti-gun propaganda at every turn, not just for ourselves and our friends, but for all Americans.