Everytown’s New NRA ‘Exposé’ Only Exposes Its Own Poor Journalism Skills

So-called Everytown for Gun Safety, which hasn’t been heard of in most towns in the nation and has hardly anything to do with gun safety, brags that its “Smoking Gun” project is dedicated to “exposing the gun industry’s role in our gun violence epidemic.”

Judging from its latest “exposé,” whoever is in charge there doesn’t know the difference between the truth and wildly exaggerated hype about a very important subject that we’ll set the record straight on here.

Headlined “Newly Uncovered Documents Reveal NRA’s Behind-the-Scenes Efforts to Create Sweeping Legal Protections for the Gun Industry,” the press release about the report tries to make it sound like NRA officials crept around in political backrooms, passing out $100 bills and trying to make a law that would protect gun manufacturers that the author calls “bad actors” from helping murder innocent Americans.

Actually, that wasn’t the case at all. Channeling my inner Paul Harvey, “Now, the rest of the story.”

In the early 2000s, Andrew Cuomo, attorney general under President Bill Clinton, was encouraging frivolous lawsuits against gun manufacturers for the illegal misuse of their lawfully made and legally sold products. More than 30 cities and counties had sued various firearms manufacturers, alleging that they should be held financially responsible for the cost of urban murders committed with firearms.

In fact, at the time, Cuomo was trying to make gun manufacturers the “next big tobacco,” despite the fact that, unlike cigarettes, when used properly and safely, firearms aren’t a danger to anyone. And despite the fact that “keeping” and “bearing” firearms is specifically protected by the Second Amendment.

The plan was for gun manufacturers, who didn’t have nearly as deep of pockets as the big tobacco companies did, to yield to incremental gun control through litigation rather than legislation since Congress had little interest in most of the administration’s anti-gun proposals. At the time, Cuomo boldly warned gun companies that if they didn’t cooperate with the administration’s schemes, they’d suffer “death by a thousand cuts.” And he might have been correct.

Seeing the likely dire results of the efforts of Cuomo’s and a number of big-city mayors’ schemes—namely, gun companies going out of business, horribly damaging the Second Amendment—National Rifle Association leaders rolled up their sleeves and went to work. The NRA worked with pro-gun lawmakers in Congress to draft legislation to protect gun manufacturers from frivolous lawsuits holding them liable for criminal misuse of their products.

With much pushback from the Clinton Administration, anti-gunners in Congress and various gun-ban organizations, the fight wasn’t an easy one. But the effort eventually resulted in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which was finally passed in 2005 and signed into law by President George W. Bush.

The claim that the law protects “bad actors” and gives “blanket immunity” to the gun industry, as Everytown claims in its shoddy piece of work, is patently false. The truth is both gun manufacturers and dealers can still be held liable for damages resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct and other actions for which they are directly responsible—just not for criminal misuse of their legal products. But Everytown will never tell you that.

Nor will cynical Democrat politicians. Even President Joe Biden has repeatedly lied about PLCAA over the past four years.

“If I get one thing on my list, if the Lord came down and said, ‘Joe, you get one of these,’ give me that one,” Biden said of repealing the PLCAA in an April 2021 Rose Garden ceremony. Later, during his 2022 State of the Union address, Biden stated: “Repeal the liability shield that makes gun manufacturers the only industry in America that can’t be sued—the only one! Imagine had we done that with the tobacco manufacturers.”

President Biden knows that’s a lie, and the folks at Everytown know that’s a lie. But bitterness dies hard when you have to look back at the major loss the NRA handed gun-ban advocates by seeing the PLCAA through to fruition nearly 20 years ago.

Go ahead and read the piece-of-trash “expose” from Everytown if you want. You’re nearly sure to come to the same conclusion I did. In fact, if that kind of work is what Bloomberg is funding through Everytown’s “Smoking Gun,” I won’t be surprised if he pulls the plug on the project sometime soon, given this latest poor effort.

In the end, the only good thing about the “exposé” is that it gave us the chance to set the record straight yet again. Thanks for that opportunity, Everytown!