Time to poke a hole in another balloon that’s popular on The Daily Kos.
Repeal of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) has become another cause du jour. Hillary Clinton says she will repeal it; petitions are circulating to urge legislators to repeal it.
The PLCAA has been characterized as the gun manufacturers’ “get out of jail free” card because it supposedly shields them from any and all legal repercussions. The popular meme is that gunmakers don’t even bear the liabilities that manufacturers of other products must deal with.
Call it a distortion, call it a mischaracterization, call it a lie. Take your pick.
The PLCAA does not shield gunmakers from liability for defects or failure to honor warranties nor does it protect them from lawsuits for injuries, deaths or damages resulting from defects.
The PLCAA does not protect sellers from liability for negligent entrustment. Congress defined negligent entrustment:
As used in subparagraph (A)(ii), the term “negligent entrustment” means the supplying of a qualified product by a seller for use by another person when the seller knows, or reasonably should know, the person to whom the product is supplied is likely to, and does, use the product in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical injury to the person or others.
So grounds for negligent entrustment apply only to the actual seller of the firearm selling a gun to a person likely to use it negligently or illegally.
The PLCAA also leaves manufacturers, distributors and retailers liable for failing to keep proper records or for falsifying records.
What the PLCAA does do is “prohibit causes of action against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms or ammunition products, and their trade associations, for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.” (U.S. Code Title 15, Chapter 105 § 7901)
To read all of the Congressional findings, click here.
What the PLCAA was intended to avoid was the “death by a thousand cuts” promised by Housing and Urban Development Secretary Andrew Cuomo and the bankruptcies promised by Elliott Spitzer. It was passed by the Senate 65-31 and the House of Representatives by a 283-144 margin. There was bipartisan support in both chambers. President George W. Bush signed it into law on October 206, 2005.
While you may not like it, it’s important. Repealing the PLCAA opens the door for all sorts of lawsuits.
Last December, Lakeisha Holloway deliberately drove her 1996 Oldsmobile onto a crowded Las Vegas sidewalk, killing a mother of three and injuring 37, some of them critically. Is General Motors liable for Ms. Holloway’s actions? If you favor repealing the PLCAA, then your answer is “yes.” The answer also is “yes” for suing Hillerich & Bradsby if someone uses a Louisville Slugger baseball bat in an assault or murder or Cutco, Ecko or Henckels if someone commits a murder with one of their kitchen knives (both blunt instruments and knives are more commonly used in homicides than rifles like the Bushmaster).
So repealing the PLCAA would create chaos and carnage in American industry as lawsuits based on the most tenuous connections cripple manufacturers.
If you are hurt or suffer damages from a defective firearm, you can sue. If the manufacturer fails to honor a warranty, you can sue. If a seller knowingly sells a firearm to someone they know is likely to misuse it and you are injured by that person, you can sue (this happened to Badger Guns in Wisconsin). The PLCAA provides no protection for gunmakers in those instances.
So you get the same remedies with gun companies that you do with most other consumer goods manufacturers plus the extra protection if a seller knowingly delivers the product to someone that shouldn’t have it.
And that should be plenty.