George Soros’s Open Society Funded Foreign Agents’ Lawsuits Against U.S. Gun Industry

Opinion

Earlier this month, the Washington Free Beacon ran a piece titled, “‘Assault on Our Sovereignty’: How George Soros Funds Foreign Government Lawsuits Against American Gun Makers.” The item detailed how Hungarian-born billionaire George Soros’s Open Society Foundations helped fund anti-gun group Global Action on Gun Violence (GAGV), who collaborated with Mexico to bring a lawsuit against members of the U.S. firearms industry for harms caused by violent criminals south of the border.

Over the years, Soros has funneled $32 billion to the Open Society Foundations, which in turn bankrolls many leftwing causes throughout the world. Soros’s son Alex, chair of the board of directors for the Open Society Foundations, is frequently seen hobnobbing with Democratic Party elites – and not-so-elites.

Soros’s apparatus has worked against Americans’ Second Amendment rights for decades.

In 2000, Open Society published a widely circulated report entitled, “Gun Control in the United States.” The publication called for a host of new federal and state gun restrictions.

At the federal level, the report recommended the criminalization of private transfers, a ban on affordable handguns, and maintained that “Pre-1986 machine guns and pre-1994 assault weapons should be banned from private purchase.” The report also lauded President Bill Clinton’s efforts to impose a federal licensing system on gun owners. However, the radicals at Open Society contended that Clinton’s policy was not ambitious enough and “on its own would fall short.”

The report recommended that states “should move toward consistent regulatory frameworks based on licensing of firearm owners and registration of guns.” The publication also concluded that states should enact gun-rationing laws and coordinate efforts to enact further gun control.

In the early 2000s, Open Society also gave support to gun control groups such as the Million Mom March, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, and Women Against Gun Violence. Further, the group funded various dubious lawsuits against the gun industry, including a high-profile case brought by the NAACP.

In 2013 Open Society granted $150,000 to the gun control collaborative Fund for a Safer Future. This month, the collaborative announced that former Co-Deputy Director of White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention Rob Wilcox would be leading the group. Member organizations include Everytown for Gun Safety and the Joyce Foundation, which funds handgun prohibitionist group Violence Policy Center.

A 2016 interview with one of Open Society’s grantees, Marlon Peterson, provided an idea of Open Society’s position might be on the Second Amendment. Peterson said that NRA and the “firearms industrial complex” had, “bastardized the Second Amendment for capital gain at the expense of thousands of American lives every year.” The grantee went on to add, “This nation needs to be bold enough to reconsider our relationship to the Second Amendment.”

Open Society had a close relationship with international gun control activist Rebecca Peters. An Australian, Peters came to international prominence in 1996 as a campaigner for her country’s gun ban and confiscation regime. Peters went on to be the program director for the Funder’s Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention, which received funding from Open Society.

More recent records show that in the last seven years, Open Society has provided grants to the Brady Campaign to prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.), March for Our Lives Action Fund, and Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly the Second Amendment-denying Legal Community Against Violence).

Then there is Open Society’s 2023, 2-year, $300,000 grant to GAGV. Open Society is also listed on GAGV’s website as a “philanthropic partner.”

The stated “action strategy” of GAGV is to use litigation against the gun industry, specifically for “harm suffered outside of the U.S.,” to impact firearm industry behavior beyond what the existing mountains of federal and state firearms regulations require. In other words, litigation of this type seeks to institute gun controls that have not been enacted, and in some cases have been explicitly rejected, through the democratic process. While unstated, a keen observer of gun politics might conclude such efforts also seek to bankrupt the industry entirely.

Of course, this is the exact type of litigation the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was designed to prevent. The PLCAA was enacted in 2005, with broad bipartisan support, to protect the firearms industry from frivolous and politically-motivated lawsuits.

The PLCAA prohibits lawsuits against the gun industry for the criminal misuse of their products by a third party. Such a federal law shouldn’t even be necessary. The PLCAA was enacted to codify a longstanding principle of tort law that gun control advocates sought to erode. U.S. tort law has long held that a person or entity cannot be held responsible for a third party’s criminal acts.

GAGV’s best-known effort was Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos (2025), in which the group collaborated with the government of Mexico to undo the PLCAA, scapegoat the U.S. firearms industry for Mexican lawlessness, and impose billions of dollars in liability on American gun manufacturers.

Counsel for Mexico included longtime Brady attorney Jonathan Lowy, now of Global Action on Gun Violence. An October 2022 Politico item reported, “Earlier this month, Global Action on Gun Violence quietly filed paperwork with the DOJ under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, with [Jonathan] Lowy and Elizabeth Burke, who was also an attorney at Brady, registering as agents of Mexico.” The group’s website makes clear, “GAGV is registered under the FARA as an agent for the Governments of Mexico and the Bahamas.”

GAGV’s Mexico case made it up to the U.S. Supreme Court, who were not impressed. In a 9-0 ruling the Court determined that Mexico’s case was precluded by the PLCAA.

In her concurring opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson underscored how Mexico’s theory of the case struck at the heart of what Congress was trying to prevent with the PLCAA. She noted, “Activists had deployed litigation in an effort to compel firearms manufacturers and associated entities to adopt safety measures and practices that exceeded what state or federal statutes required,” and the “PLCAA embodies Congress’s express rejection of such efforts—stymying those who, as Congress put it, sought ‘to accomplish through litigation that which they have been unable to achieve by legislation.’” Mexico’s essential failure, she emphasized, was to fault “the industry writ large for engaging in practices that legislatures and voters have declined to prohibit.”

The sprawling Soros philanthropic/political network has been in the news of late, drawing increased scrutiny from some quarters. Gun owners should stay focused on the threat Open Society and its many beneficiaries pose to their Second Amendment rights.

About NRA-ILA:

Established in 1975, the Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) is the “lobbying” arm of the National Rifle Association of America. ILA is responsible for preserving the right of all law-abiding individuals in the legislative, political, and legal arenas, to purchase, possess, and use firearms for legitimate purposes as guaranteed by the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Visit: www.nra.org