Gunmakers’ liability targeted
Several states looking to roll back laws shielding firearms industry from victims’ suits
DENVER — Mass shootings in America invariably raise questions of fault. The police’s delayed response outside an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. A district attorney’s failure to prosecute the alleged Club Q shooter a year before five were killed in the LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
That finger of blame, however, rarely lands on the manufacturer of the guns used in the massacres.
Lawmakers in Colorado and at least six other states are proposing bills to roll back legal protections for gun manufacturers and dealers that have kept the industry at arm’s length from questions of blame.
California, New York, Delaware and New Jersey have passed similar legislation in the last three years.
A draft version of Colorado’s bill not only repeals the state’s 2000 law that broadly keeps firearms companies from being held liable for violence perpetrated with their products, but also outlines a code of conduct that, in part, targets how companies design and market firearms.
Colorado is joined by Hawaii, New Hampshire, Virginia, Washington, New Mexico and Maryland, which are considering similar bills.
While the firearms industry is still largely shielded from liability under federal law, the bill in Colorado would make it easier for victims of gun violence to file civil suits, such as the one lodged against Remington in 2015 — the company that made the rifle used in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut.
Last year, Remington settled with the families of those killed in the shooting for $73 million after the families accused the company of targeting younger, at-risk males in advertising and product placement in violent video games.
States with the law already in place, however, are now facing legal challenges or threats of lawsuits from national gun rights groups, in part because the federal law passed by Congress in 2005 already gives the gun industry broad legal immunity.
“We may forget how unusual and bizarre this is to provide this exemption from accountability,” said Ari Freilich, state policy director for the gun control advocacy group Giffords, who argues that the federal law allows states some control over the industry’s legal liability.
This bill would “empower victims of gun violence to have their day in court and be able to show that the gun industry may have failed to take reasonable precautions to avoid harm,” Freilich said.
Mark Oliva, managing director for public affairs at the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has filed the lawsuits against other state’s laws, said Colorado’s would be “ripe” for a legal challenge if the bill passes. Oliva argues that if Coors Brewing Company shouldn’t be held responsible for its customers drinking and driving, then why should gun businesses be held responsible for what their customers do?
The bill’s sponsors said the legislation would merely level the playing field with other industries, such as pharmaceuticals, which don’t share the gun industry’s legal protections. They argue that this would not only open a path for gun violence victims to find legal recourse, but also that the threat of civil lawsuits dangling over the industry’s head would force the industry’s actors to police themselves.