OPINION:
If President Biden has his way, gun manufacturers in the nation will soon enough go extinct.
“Most people don’t realize,” Biden said at a Rose Garden speech to announce his executive actions against guns, “the only industry in America, billion-dollar industry, that can’t be sued, that’s exempt from being sued, are gun manufacturers.”
That’s not true.
In fact, it’s the 180-degree opposite of true.
Gun manufactures can indeed be sued for manufacturing defective guns. They can also be sued for safety glitches — and even perceived, alleged safety glitches. That’s not to say the lawsuits will result in favor for the plaintiffs — but it is to say lawsuits against gun manufacturers can proceed.
The right to sue does exist. In 2018, for instance, parents of a 13-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed by his friend, who was playing with a pistol that had a single bullet in the chamber, sued Armory Inc., accusing the gun manufacturer of negligence.
In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, also known as the Child Safety Lock Act, barring gun manufacturers from being sued for frivolous reasons — defined as basically those reasons that weren’t based on proof of defective product, or on “other actions for which they are directly responsible in much the same manner that any U.S.-based manufacturer of consumer products is held responsible,” as the bill’s summary states.
But in mid-2020, a three-judge panel of Pennsylvania’s Superior Court hearing the merits of the parents’ accusations ruled that the PLCAA was an infringement on state courts and legislatures.
Legal minds called the court’s attack on PLCAA “provocative, “aggressive,” and “creative” more than constitutional — that is, activist.
But the fact is: Suits against gun manufacturers can indeed go forward. So Biden is wrong. Or maybe misinformed. Or maybe lying.
At the least, Biden is using deceptive hyperbole as a means of cutting down a crucial protection for gun manufacturers — and the Second Amendment.
PLCAA is only common sense.
Why should the makers of firearms be held liable when criminals illegally use their products to commit their illegal and criminal acts? Suing gun manufacturers for the shoot-and-kills of criminals is akin to suing car manufacturers when bank robbers use getaway vehicles to flee.
It’s just not the manufacturers’ fault.
But Biden wants to remove those basic legal protections on gun-makers. Now Biden wants to toss out that 2005 exemption and make the manufacturers pay the price for those they can’t control in the first place.
“Today,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki, “the administration announced initial actions to address gun violence.”
No, not even close. Reeling in protections for gun-makers against frivolous, non-sensical, non-sensible lawsuits won’t do anything but bankrupt the gun manufacturers. And that is exactly what the Democrats ultimately want.
In their world of upside-down logic, laws work — except, of course, against those whom would subvert the law for criminal intents.
Democrats can’t stop criminals from using guns. Democrats won’t address the root causes of gun violence — the fatherless homes, the drug addictions, the rise of gangs, the open borders, the secularization of America. So they’ll work instead to take away guns from the law-abiding.
And as Psaki said — ominously, about Biden’s crackdowns on the Second Amendment: “There will be more. That is absolutely his commitment.”
So it begins.
The assault of the Democrat White House and the Democrat-controlled House and Democrat-controlled Senate against law-abiding gun owners has just begun.
This isn’t at all about safety. It’s about control.
Democrats want to disarm the law-abiding public so as to create a chaotic society that they will then be called upon to control. And that means leftists will expand their bootprints and have an excuse to stomp individual freedoms more.
Without a Second Amendment, remember: There’s nothing, in the end, to secure the God-given rights of individuals.
• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Socialists Don’t Sleep: Christians Must Rise Or America Will Fall,” is available by clicking HERE.
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