New Jersey’s Gun Industry Liability Law Blocked by Biden Appointee

Gun-control advocates won’t be able to sue gun companies over the lawful manufacture and sale of firearms in New Jersey.

That’s the order U.S. District Court Judge Zahid N. Quraishi, a Biden appointee, handed down on Tuesday. The judge issued a preliminary injunction blocking enforcement of New Jersey’s “public nuisance” law, Assembly Bill 1765, that sought to allow residents to sue gun makers who don’t “establish, implement, and enforce reasonable controls regarding its manufacture, sale, distribution, importing, and marketing of gun related products.” The judge sided with the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), an industry trade group, and found the state law violates the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which protects companies from liability for the criminal use of their products by third parties.

“Congress’s intent here is clear. ‘The PLCAA’s purpose is to ‘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.’ A1765 does just the opposite,” Judge Quraishi wrote in his opinion. “To read A1765 as fitting within the predicate exception would run afoul of the goals of the PLCAA and would, in fact, ‘gut the PLCAA’ as NSSF suggests.”