In the wake of the mass killing at a school in Parkland, Florida, Americans are again embroiled in a debate about guns, and the consensus (at least outside of Congress) seems to be that it’s beyond time for sensible and effective gun laws.

Less clear is what those laws might be. Which ones would be the most effective in preventing the kind of killing sprees to which Americans have grown far too accustomed? And which ones would prevent the thousands of deaths that don’t grab headlines, but still make the United States’ gun-slaughtered body count an outlier among peacetime nations?

Some are obvious: banning the bump stocks that make it possible to turn a legal gun into what amounts to an automatic machine gun; barring convicted violent criminals and those with domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns; requiring robust background checks for every single gun purchase; and strengthening licensing requirements so that, like driving a car, anyone who owns a gun has to actually know how to use one. Perhaps less obvious, but just as important: treating gun manufacturers like any other company.

Sign up for the US opinion email

Shockingly, this is not currently the case. For the past decade, gun manufacturers have enjoyed special legal protections shielding them from lawsuits. To hear gun industry defenders explain it, these laws are necessary because it’s unfair to hold gun makers accountable for gun violence. Can you sue a knife manufacturer for a stabbing? Or a rope-maker for someone hanging themselves?

With guns, plaintiffs don’t even get their day in court.

The answer, actually, is yes – although of course your success in court would depend on the circumstances. If knives or ropes were causing the kind of widespread destruction guns have wreaked, and if they were similarly marketed and sold, there might just be a case against them. With guns, plaintiffs don’t even get their day in court. If the case against gun manufacturers is indeed as weak as those same manufacturers and their toadies in Congress claim, what are they so afraid of?

The crux of the issue is a 2005 law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which more or less says that gun manufacturers cannot be held liable under just about any circumstances for crimes committed with guns. It was passed partly in response to the 90s-era tobacco lawsuits, which spooked the gun industry: if tobacco companies could be sued for the predictable consequences of using their product, what might the gun industry face?

At the same time, a few cities and individuals were beginning to sue the gun industry, including dealers and manufacturers. Gunmakers and gun sellers wanted special protections unavailable to nearly any other industry. And because they have the Republican party in their pocket – and some Democrats, along with the independent Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, who voted for the PLCAA – they were able to secure broad legal protections.

There are some exceptions to the PLCAA, but they are exceedingly narrow – for example, a gun owner whose gun does not function correctly and injures the user can still sue the manufacturer over the defective product. The problem is that guns are often used exactly as intended: to kill.

‘Tipping point’: Americans organizing more than ever after Florida shooting Read more

The question is what liability gun manufacturers or sellers have in making, marketing a selling a product that kills thousands every year, and whether, for example, they are negligent in selling weapons, like the AR-15, that many argue have no place outside of a combat zone and are predictable weapons of mass death.

We don’t know the answer to that question, and a case addressing it wouldn’t be a slam dunk, even if the PLCAA were rescinded – that in and of itself would not make gun manufacturers liable for crimes committed with guns. It would simply mean that the courts could hear cases arguing as much, and would have a chance to weigh the evidence, hear from experts, and draw appropriate conclusions. If gun defenders are right and there’s no legal basis for these claims even without the PLCAA, they have nothing to worry about.

And yet they seem awfully nervous about having to defend themselves in court. Yes, lawsuits are expensive and time-consuming, but gun manufacturers aren’t exactly vulnerable little guys. The American legal system has mechanisms in place for tossing out baseless lawsuits, and surely some brought against gun makers and sellers will be summarily tossed.

But others might not be. Take, for example, one of the cases some Sandy Hook families tried to bring, which more or less asserted that the manufacturers of combat-style weapons knew or reasonably should have known that those weapons posed an unreasonable risk to the public; that case was dismissed under the PLCAA.

Maybe the Sandy Hook plaintiffs would have lost anyway; maybe their claim is specious or too far removed from wrongdoing to indicate negligence. It’s hard to argue, though, that they should be barred by statute from the very opportunity to make their case. It’s hard to argue that gun makers should be protected from being treated like any other industry, and, if the claim is good enough, having to open themselves up to discovery and examination of what they know about the risks inherent to their products – and their internal decision-making on advertising and sales.



We don’t know a whole lot about how the gun industry deals with the violence, death and destruction its products bring about because the whole industry operates under a Congress-approved veil of secrecy. We do know that victims have been unjustly stymied, denied even the chance to have their voices heard in court. No good happens in the shadows, and no industry does the right thing if it’s permitted to operate partly outside of the law. Getting rid of the PLCAA won’t end gun violence. But it would let victims be heard, and it would bring a little transparency to the shadowy, coddled gun industry.

