2005: anti-liberty/gun cracktivists have hit on a new strategy for depriving Americans of arms: sue gun makers for the third-party criminal acts of others misusing their legal products about who they have no knowledge and over who they have no control. The strategy is akin to suing General Motors for the damage caused by Chevy-driving drunk drivers. Many judges wouldn’t entertain such unjust suits, but enough would, and the strategy could easily bankrupt gun makers—that was the point--even if they never lose a single lawsuit. Death by a thousand cuts is still death.

In response a truly bipartisan Congress passed The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which prohibited that abuse of the civil justice system. Socialists and communists had not yet seized complete control of the Democrat Party, which did not yet vote entirely in lockstep, trampling on civil rights for transitory political advantage.

President Biden continues to lie about the PLCAA, claiming gun manufacturers have total immunity from lawsuits, unlike any other industry. Biden continues to demand the PLCAA be repealed.  Even Politifact, among the most leftist “fact checkers,” has labeled Biden’s claims false without trying to weasel around the truth. They wrote:  

Graphic: X Screenshot

This isn’t the first time Biden has made this claim. He’s made it repeatedly, including April 2021 remarks about gun violence after a man went on a shooting rampage at three spas in the Atlanta area, killing eight, and another gunman killed 10 people at a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado. He said it again in his 2022 State of the Union address.

But the claim is inaccurate.

The gun industry is susceptible to some lawsuits, and there are federal laws restricting liability for a number of other types of businesses.

2024: anti-liberty/gun cracktivists, surely using the survivors of the victims of the attack at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, TX, have come up with another strategy: sue common carriers for delivering lawful products used illegally by people about who they have no knowledge and over who they have no control. 

Families of survivors of the Robb Elementary School shooting are suing the package shipping companies UPS and FedEx for allegedly violating state and federal law and their own corporate safety standards.

The suit attacks UPS for delivering an AR-15 rifle to a licensed Federal Firearm Dealer in Uvalde. It was from that dealer the shooter legally bought the rifle. It also attacks UPS for delivering a “Hellfire” trigger system to the shooter’s home, which it claims was less than 1000 feet away from Robb Elementary school. It apparently does not specify the exact distance.

UPS is even more removed from responsibility for the criminal misuse of firearms than gun manufacturers. UPS has no way to know how a legal product it carries might be misused. The Hellfire trigger has been on the market for more than three decades. It does not make a semiautomatic firearm fully automatic, but merely allows it to fire slightly faster. It is entirely legal.  

The 1000 foot accusation refers to the 1990 Gun Free School Zones Act, which was an attempt to make it illegal to possess guns in much of America simply because of one’s position relative to a school. Under that law, even driving past a school while armed could be charged as a federal felony. In the 1995 Lopez Decision, the Supreme Court struck down the law on Commerce Clause grounds. Congress—Bill Clinton was then POTUS—reenacted the law with a few language changes, and without the 1000 foot provision.

There is reason to believe, post Heller, McDonald and Bruen, the rewritten law is unconstitutional, and the text of the law states the federal government does not intend to occupy this particular field of law, leaving it to local and state authorities, who cannot enforce federal law.

Despite Joe Biden’s continual misrepresentations of law, leftist lawyers have had little luck violating the PLCAA, but not for lack of trying. UPS, FedEx and other carriers have little financial incentive to keep transporting firearms and firearm parts, and might be intimidated into refusing to carry such goods, making it difficult and far more expensive for manufacturers to deliver their lawful products, which is precisely what anti-liberty/gun cracktivists intend.

Hopefully this too will be struck down by judges willing to obey the Constitution, but at the very least, it illustrates an aphorism attributed to Thomas Jefferson, among others: “eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.