2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Peacelover Hillary voted for an insane war that killed hundreds of thousands, but Bernie [View all]jeff47
(26,549 posts)They have no liability when the product they sell is not defective, and sold to licensed dealers.
There was a plan to have families of victims file SLAPP lawsuits against gun manufacturers. These lawsuits would fail, but the theory was they would be so burdensome as to get the multi-billion dollar gun industry to give up and nobody would ever make guns ever again and we'd all live happily ever after.
Aside from the badly-written fairy tale aspect, there was no real plan to pay for these suits or any judgements from counter-suits. Meaning we'd get lots of cases like the family of an Aurora shooting victim who now get to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to two ammunition manufacturers. 'Cause nothing says compassion like exploiting grieving relatives and then leaving them in massive debt.
The bill Sanders voted for stopped these lawsuits before they further wrecked lives that were already in shambles. Gun manufacturers are not immune if the gun is defective, or if they sell to someone other than a licensed dealer. They still face civil and criminal liability in those situations. Even after the bill passed.