The anti-civil rights groups aren’t winning at the ballot box, and they aren’t winning legislatively. That doesn’t mean they aren’t winning. The Anti-civil rights groups, like Everytown For Gun Safety, The Brady Groups, and other anti-gun organizations, have discovered a new way to wage war on your rights, and it’s called lawfare.
Lawfare is a tactic used by repressive regimes to label and discourage civil society or individuals from claiming their legal rights via national or international legal systems.
In most cases, a little thing called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act protects gun companies, ammo companies, and firearms dealers from lawsuits when their products are used illegally. That hasn’t stopped these organizations from attacking. In reality, they don’t have to win. They can cause a firearms company to hemorrhage money simply by suing them.
Sure, the lawsuit might be thrown out, but only after a hefty amount of legal fees are paid to do so. Polymer80, the biggest 80% lower and Glock frame manufacturer out there, recently shut down. They outright stated they couldn’t afford to keep fighting the various lawsuits they had been subject to.
Lawfare has been used against Remington and Bushmaster successfully. The company was already bankrupt, but the main gain by these anti-gun groups is the ability to target the advertising firearms companies, too. Everytown For Gun Safety is currently using that angle to target Daniel Defense. Companies like Lucky Gunner have been sued several times to varying degrees of success, although they’ve seemed to be successful at fighting these organizations.
The Organization Behind the Suits
The main organization behind the lawfare against the gun industry is Everytown for Gun Safety and its varied offshoots. The gun control industry is unsurprisingly funded by billionaires, namely Michael Bloomberg, who helped found the organization and remains a large funder. Now you know if you’re wondering where an organization would get the money to file these lawsuits.
Philanthropy.com has called Bloomberg “the most dominant figure in the gun-violence prevention movement.” New York Mayor Eric Adams has called Bloomberg “the modern-day Paul Revere” of the gun control movement. The New York Times reported in a 2020 article that Bloomberg had spent 270 million dollars to strip gun rights from American citizens. According to Philahthropy.com, Everytown for Gun Safety spent 48 million dollars in 2020.
This is a well-funded attack on American rights.
A Ripple On The Industry
Outside of shutting down small American businesses and killing American jobs at companies like Polymer80, the effect of lawfare has been felt. Personally, I’ve signed tons of waivers and disclaimers in the last few years. Almost all of them stated that the XYZ gun wasn’t built or intended to be used by children. I’ve been writing about guns for ten years now, and until 2022, I never saw anything even remotely close to these disclaimers, warnings, and agreements.
A friend who works for a major firearms manufacturer told me that the term “youth” is gone from the gun industry. Things like Youth stocks don’t exist anymore. Now, they are mini stocks and bantam models. Or they simply list the LOP measurement. Firearms designed to teach children to shoot safely don’t exist anymore. No one is willing to risk advertising them as such.
I fear we’ll get to a point where clubs and ranges won’t be interested in letting accompanied children shoot. States will make it impossible for them to hunt. The change will come slowly, and eventually, the goal is to wipe out safe and responsible gun ownership within a generation.
The ultimate goal of these acts of lawfare is to end gun rights. They treat firearms like cigarettes, which is an absurd notion.
What Can We Do?
We have tons of organizations out there fighting for gun rights. They are winning in the courts and at the ballot box. The current lawfare trend is a small group of people, namely billionaires with armed security, attacking American rights. As we’ve seen with elections and laws passed, the United States doesn’t want their nonsensical gun control. They’ve taken the fight elsewhere.
I’m no lawyer. I think we could form a group that’s funded by donations to help these gun companies. They can resist and fight back against these lawsuits. The groups focusing on laws and fighting for the Constitution certainly have their hands full. Still, this is a front we can’t surrender. All the rights in the world won’t mean anything if the gun companies are shut down or will only sell to LEO and Mil customers.
We have to resist lawfare, fight back, and help the future of gun rights remain bright.
