Pennsylvania appeals court rules gun industry protection law unconstitutional News
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Pennsylvania appeals court rules gun industry protection law unconstitutional

The Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled Monday that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 (PLCAA), a federal gun industry protection law, is unconstitutional.

In 2016 a 13-year-old boy was accidentally shot and killed by his friend when the friend mistakenly believed that a gun was unloaded. The boy’s parents sued Springfield Armory, Inc. and Saloom Department Store for alleged defects, claiming that the gun lacked a safety feature to disable it from firing without the clip attached.

The trial court found that the PLCAA barred the lawsuit because it prohibits civil lawsuits from being brought against gun manufacturers due to misuse of their products by others. The plaintiffs appealed, claiming that the PLCAA did not apply and that the act was unconstitutional.

On appeal, the Superior Court found that the PLCAA was unconstitutional and violated the Tenth Amendment. The act was exercised under the Commerce Clause power, but the court stated the “proper constitutional inquiry” was whether under the Commerce Clause power Congress could “regulate state-based, tort lawsuits, filed in state courts, against the gun industry.”

The court found that Congress committed constitutional overreach in the PLCAA because the act regulated the inactivity of people who never took part in a commercial transaction in the gun industry. The plaintiffs in the case significantly did not purchase the gun that killed their son. The PLCAA encompassed almost any activity because it encompassed any activity in which any firearm was shipped or transported in interstate or foreign commerce.

Because the act was a Congressional tort-reform bill, it reformed the state law of torts and converted it to federal law. The court noted that the PLCAA resembled the Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1990, which was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Like the Gun-Free School Zone Act, the PLCAA was unsustainable because it granted the gun industry immunity “regardless of how far removed from interstate commerce the harm arises.”

The court held that the PLCAA was unconstitutional in its entirety, writing that “The only portions of the PLCAA that do not offend the Constitution are its findings and purposes (in Section 7901) and a few definitions (in Section 7903).”

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