Attorney General Maura Healey looks to hold gun manufacturers accountable for facilitating ‘dangerous individuals’ Attorney General Maura Healey (Zgreenblatt/WikiCommons)
Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey and 14 other attorney generals have filed a brief with the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts stating that the federal law, Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), does not shield gun manufacturers from consumer laws governing the sale of firearms.
“It is unacceptable for gun manufacturers and distributors to knowingly market their products in a way that facilitates the illegal trafficking of weapons into the hands of dangerous individuals,” said Healey. “We urge the court to recognize that gun dealers, manufacturers, and distributors may be held accountable under state laws for how they market and sell their products.”
PLCAA is a law that protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products.
Along with Massachusetts, Attorney generals from California, Connecticut, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York and Oregon were part of the coalition.
The brief supports the government of Mexico in a lawsuit brought against seven U.S.-based gun manufacturers, Smith & Wesson, Barrett Firearms, Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock and Ruger, and a Massachusetts-based gun distributor, Interstate Arms.
Mexico’s complaint alleges the weapon companies design, market, distribute and sell guns in a way they know appeals to drug cartels and violent gangs in Mexico.
It argues against the gun manufacturers’ contentions that, through PLCAA, Congress “erected an insurmountable barrier to traditional state law forms of accountability.”
Last year, Smith & Wesson President and CEO Mark Smith said that the company doesn’t want to make an enemy of the state but added that “we are under attack by the state of Massachusetts.”
Smith & Wesson announced in 2021 that it would be relocating part of its 575,000-square-foot Springfield facility to Tennessee after 165 years in the city. It will retain 1,000 jobs and metal cutting and precision manufacturing operations at 2100 Roosevelt Ave. plant but will lay off 550 workers.
The company cited legislation proposed by Springfield state Rep. Bud Williams and others that, if enacted, would prohibit the company from manufacturing certain firearms in the state that are banned for sale here. That list includes military-style rifles with high capacities and some handguns. The law was proposed in response to mass shootings.
In August 2021, just over Interstate 291, a billboard appeared a few hundred yards from the Smith & Wesson factory of slain high school student Joaquin “Guac” Oliver. He was shot four times with an M&P15 rifle made by the Springfield-based factory.
“I can’t turn 21 and enjoy my first legal beer because a Florida teen was allowed to get his first legal AR-15,” the billboard reads.
Parents of Guac’s parents Manuel and Patricia Oliver, through their activist group, Change the Ref, funded the billboard. Guac died at the hands of a 19-year-old boy with a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle inside the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018.
The state has 24 known gun manufacturers, said John Rosenthal, founder of Stop Handgun Violence. Among them are Savage Arms in Westfield — which specializes in hunting and target-shooting — and Smith & Wesson in Springfield which has, since the expiration of the federal assault weapons ban in 2004, expanded into products it calls “modern sporting rifles.”
“While Congress intended PLCAA to bar lawsuits seeking to hold gun manufacturers and sellers liable for harms committed by third parties, it also preserved remedies for harms committed by manufacturers and sellers themselves, as when they violate consumer protection laws applicable to the sale and marketing of guns,” reads the brief. “Mexico’s lawsuit alleges the defendants themselves knowingly violated common law duties and statutes applicable to the sale or marketing of firearms. PLCAA is not, accordingly, a valid defense to Mexico’s lawsuit.”
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