By: Teresa Mull

Firearms manufacturers are currently protected under federal law from being held liable for crimes committed with the weapons they produce. If ultra-liberal billionaire activist George Soros has his way, that law would be repealed.

The Washington Free Beacon reports:

Soros’s [Open Society Policy] reported $5.92 million in expenditures throughout the second quarter, which included lobbying the House of Representatives and Senate for the Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act.

The Equal Access to Justice for Victims of Gun Violence Act was introduced in the House by Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) and seeks to "repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, and provide for the discoverability and admissibility of gun trace information in civil proceedings."

Schiff previously appeared at a secretive gathering of Democracy Alliance, the left’s largest donor club cofounded by Soros, in D.C. last November. He gave the group a closed-door briefing, the Free Beacon reported. The president of Democracy Alliance, Gara LaMarche, was previously the director of Soros’s lobbying outfit and now sits on its board of directors.

The Senate version of Schiff’s bill was introduced by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D., Conn.), also to "repeal the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act."

No report yet if Soros plans to go after beer, wine, and liquor companies for being responsible for DUI-related car crashes, manufacturers of hammers and clubs (which the FBI reports killed more people in 2017 than rifles), or the chemical compound H2O, which has been known to lead to people’s death, too.

Stay tuned.

GPM reported earlier this year:

The family of a woman killed during Stephen Paddock’s mass shooting spree during the 2017 Route 91 Country Music Festival in Las Vegas has filed a wrongful death suit against eight gun manufacturers and three dealers, alleging that the companies marketed their weapons as easily interchangeable from semi-automatic to full-automatic.

The lawsuit is the latest in a string of cases seeking to overturn a federal law that shields gun manufacturers from liability in cases where their weapon is used to commit a crime.

“It is wrong to blame the manufacturers of legal, non-defective products lawfully sold for the actions of a madman,” Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told the Associated Press. “Doing so would be like attempting to hold Ford responsible for a deranged criminal who affixes after-market parts to a Mustang and then misused that car to attack a group of pedestrians.”

Gun manufacturers are currently protected from liability under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, passed in 2005 during George W. Bush’s second term. The law does not, however, protect gun dealers and manufacturers who sell defective products, breach their contract with distributors, or promote criminal misconduct.

The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in the Eighth Judicial District Court of the State of Nevada, does not contend that any of the defendants committed acts that are not covered under current laws. Instead, the lawsuit alleges that AR-15s are marketed with an “integrated” bump stock.

“AR-15s were designed to shoot automatically because that’s what the military needed,” Josh Koskoff, the lawyer representing the family of slain 31-year-old Carrie Parsons, wrote on his website. “The capacity for automatic fire, which remains very much in the DNA of the ‘civilian’ AR-15s sold today, can be unlocked with the simplest of modifications. The result is the kind of large-scale devastation we saw in Las Vegas.”

Parsons was visiting Las Vegas from Seattle, Washington when she became one of 58 people killed during Paddock’s10-minute rampage. During that time, Paddock shot nearly 1,100 rounds into a crowd of 20,000, wounding 800.

The gun manufacturers named in the suit include Colt, Daniel Defense, Patriot Ordnance, FN, Noveske, Christensen, and Lewis Machine & Tool.

Courts looked favorably on PLCAA until the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that Remington could be sued for marketing the AR-15 that was used during the Sandy Hook Massacre in 2012.

Teresa Mull is editor of Gunpowder Magazine. Contact her at [email protected].