Back in 1999, when the city of Gary, Indiana, filed a lawsuit against firearm manufacturers seeking to hold them responsible for the criminal actions of unrelated and remote third parties, it’s likely no one expected the litigation to drag on for more than a quarter of a century.
Now, some 26 years later, the Indiana Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled to end the action, upholding a new law that states only the state of Indiana can bring a lawsuit against a firearms industry member.
According to a news release from the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the City of Gary first filed its claim in 1999, as part of a coordinated effort by over 40 big-city mayors who conspired through the U.S. Conference of Mayors with gun control activist from Brady United trial lawyers. At the time, Andrew Cuomo, President Bill Clinton’s Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, organized dozens of local housing authorities to bring lawsuits against gunmakers and even bragged the lawsuits would inflict upon the industry a “death by a thousand cuts.”
All of those municipal lawsuits were either dismissed by the courts, as were actions in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Detroit and St. Louis, or simply dropped by cities like Boston, Cincinnati, Wilmington and Camden. The Gary lawsuit, however, was revived back in 2021 when city leaders decided to again press the issue despite two decades of not winning the case.
“This is a tremendous day for of the rule of law, common sense and the firearm industry,” Lawrence G. Keane, NSSF senior vice president a general counsel, said in a news release announcing the victory. “The City of Gary never had a serious claim. Instead, it was committed to a losing lawfare strategy to abuse the courts in order to force gun control policy outside of legislative channels. The bottom line is that these sorts of frivolous claims have no business clogging our courts and special-interest groups cannot circumvent elected representative bodies by attempting legislation through litigation. NSSF is deeply grateful to Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita for his strong defense of this law.”
The court ruling was based on House Bill 1235, which former Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb signed into law in 2024. That law provides that only the state of Indiana may “bring or maintain an action by or on behalf of a political subdivision against a firearm or ammunition manufacturer, trade association, seller or dealer concerning certain matters.” The law also “prohibits a political subdivision from otherwise independently bringing or maintaining such an action.”
Gary’s action against gunmakers also runs afoul of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed by Congress in 2005 in response to the spate of big-city lawsuits against companies in the industry. That law blocks lawsuits that attempt to hold firearm and ammunition industry companies liable for the criminal actions of third parties who misuse the industry’s lawful non-defective products.
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