Gun industry lawyers went to court on Friday to challenge a New York law that allows people to sue firearm manufacturers for contributing to gun violence.
The state law is intended as a workaround to a federal law that mostly prohibits people from suing gun manufacturers. Gun safety activists have long held that the federal law, passed in 2005, is a major roadblock to holding gun companies accountable for the damage their products do.
New York now permits lawsuits against firearm companies that “knowingly or recklessly” market or distribute their products in a way that poses a danger to the public’s health or safety. It also requires gun companies that do business in New York to take measures to prevent their products from being used to commit crimes.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation and more than a dozen firearm companies have sued the state and challenged the law, which they say undermines federal law and should not be allowed to stand.
“I don’t think that’s what Congress had in mind,” Matthew Rowen, an attorney representing the gun industry, told a panel of judges from the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.
A federal court dismissed the gun industry’s lawsuit last year, but the plaintiffs appealed. A panel of judges will now decide whether New York’s law is legal.
Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, also known as the PLCAA, to shield firearm companies from a barrage of lawsuits in the 1990s and early 2000s that Second Amendment advocates said could destroy the industry. Lawmakers who supported the measure said gun companies shouldn’t be held responsible for people who misused their products to commit crimes.
But the federal law included a few carveouts, including one section that allows for litigation against gun manufacturers or sellers that knowingly break a state or federal law. New York used that loophole to craft its legislation.
Rowen argued the state law stretches the exception so far that it could “swallow…
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