AUSTIN –Attorney General Paxton has joined a Montana-led amicus brief in the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, pushing back against an activist judiciary ignoring federal law and Americans’ constitutional rights under the 2nd amendment.
In Gustafson v. Springfield Armory, a Pennsylvania couple is attempting to hold liable a gun manufacturer, Springfield Armory, and a gun dealer, Saloom Department Store, for their son’s death despite the fact that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was passed precisely in order to protect the firearms industry from such lawsuits.
Like the trial court that first heard this case, courts across the nation have consistently upheld the PLCAA’s constitutionality. But the intermediate appellate court departed from precedent, ignored federal law, and overruled the trial court when it declared the PLCAA unconstitutional.
In the brief, Attorney General Paxton and his allied attorneys general urge the Pennsylvania Supreme Court to hear the case and strike down the appeals court’s decision. Without the PLCAA in place, anti-gun radicals across the country would initiate frivolous lawsuits designed to destroy the 2nd Amendment by financially ruining gun manufacturers and stripping American citizens of their right to secure lawful gun ownership.
As the brief states: “In
the view of the founding generation, the right to keep and bear arms
was not just about individual protection—it was a check on tyranny. The
modern anti-gun lobby disagrees. But these groups have failed to take
away guns from law-abiding citizens and they have failed to override the
Constitution at the state level. Undiscouraged, they’ve now resorted
to recycling failed legal challenges from the 80s and 90s, which aim to
disarm Americans by bankrupting gun manufacturers. But Congress
foreclosed these suits by passing the PLCAA.”
