White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said last week that President Joe Biden is “looking forward” to “repealing gun manufacturers’ liability shields.”
Firearms manufacturers do not have “liability shields” that aren’t also afforded to any other industry. Nevertheless, President Joe Biden (D) peddles this falsehood.
What Psaki is referring to is Biden’s desire to repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which protects the firearms industry from frivolous lawsuits—suits in which someone sues a firearm’s maker or dealer because someone else broke the law by using a legal product to commit a crime.
“The PLCAA’s plain words simply prevent firearms makers and dealers from being held liable if someone illegally uses one of their products. Just imagine if a car manufacturer, a knife maker, or a baseball bat company could be held civilly liable every time some monster used one of their products to harm someone. Those businesses would soon be bankrupt,” A1F.com wrote previously.
Firearms manufacturers, of course, can still be held liable should a product be found defective or if the manufacturer violates other product-liability standards or laws.
“Suits against the industry for knowingly unlawful sales, negligent entrustment, and those predicated on traditional product-liability grounds are all also still permitted,” reported A1F.com.
Biden’s campaign website said he wants to repeal the PLCAA. “This law protects these manufacturers from being held civilly liable for their products, a protection granted to no other industry,” reads the website. Again, this is just not true.
Just as Biden also mislabels commonly owned rifles as “assault weapons,” he perpetuates this dishonest narrative designed to malign firearms manufacturers. This is a roundabout way to go after the Second Amendment by bankrupting firearms manufacturers with lawsuit after lawsuit, draining them of any and all funds.
