“If you are, in fact, contributing to kids being killed in Crown Heights, in Brownsville, in East Flatbush…then no, we do not want your business,” says State Sen. Myrie, sponsor of the bill that legalized civil suits against the gun industry in New York.
There was also a push on the national level to regulate the sector. Before leaving office in 2000, President Bill Clintonwith the manufacturer Smith & Wesson to add new safety measures to their designs, stop working with dealers whose sales were regularly traced to crime scenes and limit their magazine capacity to 10 rounds of ammunition.
“That was sort of the point, was to kneecap this lawful industry and to make it more difficult, more expensive for them to engage in, again, this lawful industry,” says Swearer of the Heritage Foundation. “So, Congress stepped in to essentially say, ‘You can’t file those suits anymore.’”t, also known as the PLCAA, which shields the gun industry from lawsuits when their products are used in shootings, with just a handful exceptions.
“I think then you will see a lot of other states that are more friendly to gun control and to these sorts of arguments, I think you will see more of these sorts of laws being passed, precisely to give room for those sorts of lawsuits circumventing the PLCAA,” Swearer says. Unfortunately, bad actions by industries and corporations are usually not resolved by the good will of a CEO“Unfortunately, bad actions by industries and corporations are usually not resolved by the good will of a CEO or the good will of an industry leader,” he says. “The unfortunate reality is that they are often forced to change their practices by way of litigation.”Myrie wishes corporations would take more steps to prevent their firearms from being used in crimes before anyone sues them.