Daniel Defense Wins Important Gun Rights Case in Virginia

A senior U.S. District Court judge in Virginia has dismissed a federal lawsuit filed by two victims of a 2022 school shooting against Daniel Defense and more than a dozen other defendants, saying their allegations essentially did not pass legal muster under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).

The 11-page ruling by U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said plaintiffs Karen Lowy and Antonio Harris, who were wounded in the April 22, 2022 shooting at Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C., “fail the proximate causation prong of the PLCAA’s predicate exception, and their claims of negligence and negligence per se far no better.”

PLCAA became law under then-President George W. Bush as a means of protecting the firearms industry from junk lawsuits attempting to hold gun makers and retailers responsible for crimes committed with the products they manufacture and sell. A flurry of such lawsuits, supported by the gun prohibition lobby, were unleashed more than two decades ago, apparently with the intention of bankrupting or financially devastating the firearms industry. PLCAA was the Congress’ response, and it both stifled and infuriated the gun control movement, which re-packaged itself as “gun safety advocates.”

However, contrary to claims by President Joe Biden and other anti-gunners, the PLCAA does not, and never did, make it impossible to sue firearms manufacturers or the gun industry. There are exceptions to the PLCAA, as noted by Judge Hilton in his ruling, “to ensure that it does not insulate firearm companies against lawsuits resulting from their unlawful behavior.”

“Here,” Judge Hilton explained, “defendants qualify for the PLCAA’s protections, and plaintiffs fail to invoke the Act’s exceptions.”

According to an article in Law 360, the list of defendants in addition to Daniel Defense, included Bravo Company USA, Inc., Vista Outdoor, Inc., Federal Cartridge, Loyal 9 Manufacturing, Hearing Protection and Torkmag, Inc., Fiocchi of America, Magpul Industries and Surefire, Fostech, Inc., Centurion Arms, and FAP Defense Inc.

As explained in the ruling, Lowy was waiting outside the school to pick up her daughter and Harris was a security guard at the school. When the shooting started, both were wounded while Lowy’s daughter “sheltered inside the school.” Ultimately, the gunman took his own life. At the time, Reuters reported the gunman, identified as Raymond Spencer, apparently fired the shots from an apartment complex. When police breached the apartment pinpointed in the shooting, they found the shooter.

In his ruling, Judge Hilton observed, “Much of plaintiffs’ complaint concerns defendants’ marketing to Virginia residents generally and ‘young men like the shooter,’ but few paragraphs allege the effect of defendants’ marketing on Shooter specifically.”

Judge Hilton goes on to observe, “The complaint does not suggest defendants control such evidence of Shooter’s reliance and does no more than speculate that Shooter, like other young men in Virginia, observed defendants’ advertisements. Without more support, these pleadings fail to raise plaintiffs’ right to relief above the speculative level and can proceed no further.’

A few lines later, the judge added, “viewed most optimistically, plaintiffs allege that Shooter relied on defendants’ advertisements when choosing to purchase defendants’ products. The Court cannot transform that allegation into an allegation that defendants’ marketing had a ‘determinative or coercive effect’ on Shooter’s decision to shoot at plaintiffs.”

Ultimately, the ruling boils down to what Judge Hilton said about the PLCAA.

“As the PLCAA’s title suggests, the statute protects firearm companies’ ‘lawful’ commerce in arms and prohibits plaintiffs from bringing civil liability actions against such companies when their injury results solely from ‘the criminal or unlawful misuse’ of the companies’ products by a third party.”

The gun prohibition lobby and their allies on Capitol Hill, in the White House and in state legislatures have crusaded to repeal the PLCAA virtually from the moment it was signed into law, and certainly it was one of the goals of the Biden-Harris gun control policy since it took office in January 2021. There is no indication that policy will change if Vice President Kamala Harris becomes the next president.

A few states have adopted laws which, proponents claim, can get around the PLCAA.

As Judge Hilton concluded, “As is axiomatic, claiming negligence requires the plaintiff to show hat the defendant’s breach ‘was the proximate cause of injury.’ And when a plaintiff claims negligence per se, he alleged ‘statutory violation must be a proximate cause of plaintiff’s injury.’ The question of proximate cause is usually a question of fact for a jury, but when ‘reasonable persons may not differ in their conclusions that such negligence was such a cause[,] a trial court properly decide (sic) the question as a matter of law.’ Here, reasonable persons may not differ because plaintiffs’ pleadings provide no basis for finding proximate cause, So, plaintiffs’ negligence and negligence per se claims fail, too.”

There has been no word about an appeal so far.

About Dave Workman

Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.