National Rifle Association members visit exhibitor booths at the 146th NRA Annual Meetings & Exhibits on April 29, 2017, in Atlanta, Georgia. With more than 800 exhibitors, the convention is the largest annual gathering for the NRA’s more than 5 million members. (Photo: Scott Olson / Getty Images)
In November 1998, the largest tobacco manufacturers in the country entered into a “master settlement agreement” with the attorneys general of 46 states in order to settle public health lawsuits that threatened to beggar the industry. The attorneys general had sued on the grounds that they had incurred immense Medicaid costs as the result of the tobacco industry’s negligent marketing practices, causing millions of people to get hooked on cigarettes and suffering health effects that burdened the state health systems.
That same month, the City of Chicago filed a lawsuit against 22 gun manufacturers and sellers of guns in the Chicago suburbs and surrounding areas for causing a “public nuisance” in supplying and selling guns around the City at a level well above what the lawful gun market could support. The City’s theory of the case was that the manufacturers and sellers must have known that the guns would end up on the illicit secondary market — that is, on the streets of Chicago, where violence was continuing at high rates.
Congress has effectively exempted this one industry from the type of product liability and nuisance litigation that just about every other industry has to protect itself against.
The case wended its way through the court system for six years, finally being dismissed by the Illinois Supreme Court in November 2004. Chicago’s suit was one of several that had been filed along similar lines — all inspired by the success of the public suits against the tobacco companies. Most of these suits suffered similar ends by 2005 — when Congress passed the Protecting Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) which granted the gun industry immunity from civil liability for the…