Availability of Litigation as a Public Health Tool for Firearm Injury Prevention:

[billh58]

Comparison of Guns, Vaccines, and Motor Vehicles

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), enacted in 2005, grants the firearm industry broad immunity from liability. The PLCAA not only prevents most people from receiving compensation for their firearm-related injuries, it erodes litigation’s ability to serve its public health role of providing manufacturers with a financial incentive to make their products safer.

When the viability of the vaccine industry was threatened in the 1980s, Congress provided limited protection from liability and also established the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program. The liability of nearly all other products, for example motor vehicles, is governed by traditional common law principles.

The absence of both litigation and product safety rules for firearms is a potentially dangerous combination for the public’s health.

ON OCTOBER 26, 2005, President Bush signed a new law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA),1 with important implications for public health. Under the PLCAA, many people injured by firearms and ammunition will not be able to hold makers or sellers of these products accountable in court for their injuries. Instead, the PLCAA grants firearm makers and dealers broad immunity from liability. Because litigation can help to prevent some deaths and injuries, a valuable tool to respond to the public health problem of firearm-related violence in the United States has been seriously eroded.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2040374/

The American Journal of Public Health supports the findings of most Liberals and thinking Americans that the PLCAA is a travesty of justice. It is also a danger to public health in that the gun manufacturers are not held to the same standard as other consumer products for safety and accountability.

This product of the right-wing NRA/ILA/ALEC cabal (and its apologists) directly contributes to the on-going gun violence epidemic in our nation's communities, and our standing as the world's leader in gun injuries and deaths.

[flamin lib]

1. There is SOOOOO much wrong about the PLCAA that volumes can and have been written.

The gunners will tell you that the PLCAA does not prevent suits IF the firearm is defective in manufacture or IF the gun seller KNEW he was selling to someone with bad intent.

BULLSHIT.

To begin with, the PLCAA provides the gun industry with an automatic deep pocket defense. When accused of wrong doing the defendant's insurance company pays the legal fees, meaning that unless the plaintiff has access to $100s of thousands the complaint will die from lack of prosecution.

Elizabeth Shirley sued Baxter Gun for selling a gun to her estranged husband, a felon, who within hours used it to kill her 10 year old son and himself. It took 12 years and a trip through the Kansas appeals system all the way to the Kansas Supreme Court to win $132,000 in damages. The evidence that finally broke the case? Testimony that the seller asked, 'Have you been a bad boy?' to which the felon replied, 'Yes, that's why Mom is filling out the paperwork.'

Secondarily, defect is defined by the manufacturer. If a firearm discharges during holstering or upholstering because the trigger pull (pressure necessary to discharge) and the creep (distance the trigger must move) causing an injury to the leg and thigh happens so often that it actually has a name (Glock leg syndrome) the maker simply declares that the gun is designed to do that. Suddenly no basis for a case.

Had the General Motors compact cars with "defective" ignition switches that killed 175 people and injured 275 more had been a Glock handgun the law suits and recall of 800,000 cars that eventually costs GM $2 billion would not have happened because the switches were actually operating within design specs.

Those are just two examples of how the PLCAA is so wrong and why those who defend it are culpable for the death and injury caused by guns.

[billh58]

2. But according to some

we are too stupid to understand that what is good for the gun manufacturers is good for our nation as a whole. You know, the nation that holds the world record in gun deaths and injuries? Where would we be without 300 million guns to protect us from other people with guns?

[Hoyt]

3. Absolutely no rationale for this law other than NRA lobbying and gunners' need for more gunz,

no matter how many innocent people are killed, maimed, intimidated by the darn things.

Gun manufacturers and dealers advertise guns in manner similar to cigarettes. Who can forget the Bushmaster "Man Card" ad, or the ones that make the dip*hit with a gun look macho protector of weak men and women? Those type ads alone should be grounds for lawsuits against some manufacturers when innocent people are murdered or wounded.

After Sandy Hook, Bushmaster should have been put into bankruptcy. In stead, white wing gun nuts lined up 2 or 3 deep for an opportunity to buy another one the weekend after the tragedy.

Christ.