“The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is a United States law which protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products. However, both manufacturers and dealers can still be held liable for damages resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct, and other actions for which they are directly responsible in much the same manner that any U.S. based manufacturer of consumer products are held responsible. They may also be held liable for negligence when they have reason to know a gun is intended for use in a crime.”
What part of this law do you find offensive?
The law isn’t offensive to me. The fact that gun control folks were trying to sue people for the criminal acts of others is offensive to me. Repealing the law would be an even bigger waste of time than passing it in the first place. At least the law saves the gun manufacturers a few million in unnecessary litigation expenses.
“Offensive” isn’t the right word, but I believe the court system handles similar cases for all other industries appropriately for the most part, and the gun industry shouldn’t get special treatment that is financially beneficial for them. I think it’s better that industries be treated the same, for the most part, and no single industry getting special treatment just to save them money. I imagine the vast majority of these sorts of cases are indeed frivolous, and I’d be fine with judges having the power to sanction and fine obviously frivolous plaintiffs, but I’m not ready to conclude that all possible such cases are worthless and there could never be such a case that might have legal and just merit.
To sum up, for the sake of fairness, no industry should get a special leg up in this manner (and many other industries get legs up in other ways – this is also bad).
The cases are nothing but legal harassment, and when even governments got in on the bandwagon, they were wasting our tax dollars to harass legit companies.
Indeed- many industry’s should get protection- bad science is bad science , and should not be left of a jury sway by emotion.
I might be okay (maybe, depending on the details) with a blanket law that affected all industries. Just not one that singles out special snowflakes for things that benefit them financially.
There are others: http://www.sott.net/article/263713-Supreme-Court-rules-drug-companies-exempt-from-lawsuits
"Justices cited the fact that all generic drugs and their manufacturers, some 80% of all drugs consumed in the United States, are exempt from liability for side effects, mislabeling or virtually any other negative reactions caused by their drugs. In short, the Court ruled that the FDA has ultimate authority over pharmaceuticals in the US. And if the FDA says a drug is safe, that takes precedent over actual facts, real victims and any and all adverse reactions. "
*The National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act (NCVIA) of 1986 (42 U.S.C. §§ 300aa-1 to 300aa-34) was enacted in the United States to reduce the potential financial liability of vaccine makers due to vaccine injury claims.
*
But the thing is- it’s fine to sue a gun manufacturer for “damages resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct, and other actions for which they are directly responsible in much the same manner that any U.S. based manufacturer of consumer products are held responsible. They may also be held liable for negligence when they have reason to know a gun is intended for use in a crime.”"
But for just making guns? It’s suing them for doing something perfectly legal. And often it uses our tax dollars on frivolous harassment lawsuits,- not designed to get damages, but designed solely to drive gun companies out of business due to legal costs.
Other industries survive and thrive without special protections, including industries opposed by activists. I don’t believe in special treatment for certain industries.
So would you be OK with a federal law either requiring state judges to impose penalties for these frivolous lawsuits (or providing a remedy in federal courts for these frivolous lawsuits)?
Depending on the details I’d certainly be open to it. It’s entirely reasonable to sanction nuisance lawsuits. But we shouldn’t wait for that to eliminate special favors for individual industries.
Someone identified another industry that receives similar protections, and your response is that other industries survive? The vaccine industry (shorthand) would not have survived. Do you think the vaccine industry should not be protected? Because if you do, that means that many vaccines would no longer be manufactured.
It sounds a lot like you are supporting frivalous lawsuits, for the benefit of I have no idea. You recognize they are frivolous, but want to encourage wastes of resources. Why are frivalous lawsuits a desireable to you?
Can you conceive of a lawsuit that is barred by the PLCAA that would otherwise have merit? What the PLCAA did, was determine that certain lawsuits by their nature have no merit.
Vaccines are different than guns. I don’t know if they would have survived or not (another unfalsifiable claim as long as such protections are in place). But vaccines are different, in public health needs and the mechanism that damages and lawsuits might occur. Other industries that are targeted by activists, which are much more comparable to the gun industry than vaccines, have survived and thrived without special protection.
I might support repealing the special vaccine protections – but I’d have to learn more about it.
I don’t know if all such lawsuits are frivolous. You say they are, and the NRA does, but that doesn’t mean they are so. I’d prefer the courts be able to decide this rather than the NRA and their allies in Congress. I trust the judgment of courts far, far more than the judgment of the NRA and Congress, in this case.
I don’t know, but I may not be a particularly creative legal thinker (and not a lawyer), so I don’t think this provides anything useful.
If our intelligence agencies knew that one of the Farouks had been in contact with foreign extremists at the same time that they legally purchased handguns (which would/should have required background checks), then some sort of link/red flat between background checks and extremist contacts might have given authorities enough warning to prevent or mitigate the San Bernadino shooting.
Similar systems for domestic extremists might have prevented or mitigated incidents like the Charleston shooting (not sure if that shooter went through a background check) – if authorities are tracking white supremacist website chatter (for example), and someone who has expressed some sort of advocacy for violence goes through a background check to purchase a gun, and this triggers some sort of red flag, then authorities might be able to prevent some domestic terrorist shootings like the Charleston church shooting.
Well Damuri didn’t say that at all, but then the next post did…
Root had drug related charges and there is speculation that he was temporarily legally barred from purchase but the information was not passed on. So the law worked fine just someone screwed up. Of course that’s all on retrospect; most people with drug charges aren’t necessarily violent.