On December 12, 2024, the New Jersey Attorney General’s Office announced a new enforcement action against Glock Inc. and Glock Ges.m.b.H, its Austrian parent company. In the lawsuit, the AG’s Office reasons that since companies and individuals completely unrelated to Glock make a thing known generally as a “switch” which modifies the internal operation of a standard Glock pistol to convert that pistol to fire automatically, Glock should somehow be responsible for those modifications. On the same day, they were joined by a similar suit brought by the State of Minnesota against Glock making a similar product liability claim.
The AG’s Office claims this is part of a 16-state “coalition”. In reality, the AG’s Office merely compiled a list of other states that have brought some form of product liability suit against a gun manufacturer in the recent past, many of which were dismissed including the City of Chicago’s more recent suit against Glock. The two suits brought last Wednesday are separate individual actions against Glock brought by those two separate states. It is unclear and, at worst, misleading, as to whether a coalition actually exists here. Like the laws the state claims to be enforcing here, this “coalition” appears to be something State Attorney General Matthew Platkin invented in his mind.
New Jersey’s Frivolous Lawsuit Machine
New Jersey’s suit relies on more than just general product liability law. It relies on N.J. Statute § 2C 58-35, the “public nuisance” law signed by Gov. Phil Murphy in 2022. This is a vague and ambiguous law that permits the AG to sue firearms manufacturers and dealers any time the AG’s Office decides those industry members’ business practices fail to meet whatever the AG’s Office has decided is “reasonable” at any one point in time. This essentially provides legal cover for the state to use frivolous and vindictive lawsuits to frustrate, defame, and punish firearms industry participants.
Since Wednesday, many writers and commentators have weighed in on how absurd and illogical this lawsuit is. For those reasons, I can add little in discussing the actual merits of this case.
Suffice it to say, this suit is absurd and illogical. It is Common SenseTM to conclude that a manufacturer of a thing cannot possibly be responsible when a consumer modifies that thing in a way that the manufacturer did not intend, especially when that modification is a complete violation of state and federal criminal law (the act of installing a switch on a Glock pistol is a 2nd-degree crime in New Jersey which would carry a penalty of five to ten years in prison and a federal crime under the National Firearms Act which would carry a minimum of 10 years in prison and a $10,000 fine).
Despite His Claims to the Contrary, the Objective is Clear
During his press conference, AG Platkin said:
I want to be clear. This is not about attacking anyone’s Second Amendment rights.
Let me be clear:
This is absolutely about attacking our Second Amendment rights.
During a conference call that Platkin had with Mom’s Demand Action on November 13, he lamented the difficulty that the Supreme Court’s decision in NYSRPA v. Bruen creates, saying,
So after Bruen, again, one of the worst decisions we’ve seen from this Supreme Court, put in place what I consider to be frankly an unworkable analysis for how judges will consider challenges to firearms statutes…
And the fact that we’re having to even argue, as we’ve done, and [Assistant AG] Angela [Kai] has done masterfully, the analogous regulations from the 1790’s or 1860’s because that’s the test that the Supreme Court has laid out, you know, we’ll do it. But I think we also need to acknowledge how crazy that is. That they had no idea about AR-15s and other modern forms of weaponry when they enacted the Second Amendment or when they applied it to the states in the Reconstruction Era through the 14th Amendment.
His November 13 meeting with MDA was immediately after his last announcement of enforcement actions against two small, brick-and-mortar retailers under this so-called nuisance law. The Bruen Court has created a substantial hurdle to justifying modern gun control laws. So the playbook is evolving. The state is directly attacking industry based on establishing “reasonable” commercial regulation, targeting both manufacturers and brick-and-mortar retailers in a never-ending barrage of “enforcement actions” for violating imaginary standards.
Through this program, the AG can both invent law out of thin air, like changing the regulatory requirements on ammunition sales even though no state statute requires that as they did in their last batch of suits, and launch frivolous product liability claims that would otherwise be completely blocked by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The AG’s Office is clearly seeking to create an unstable regulatory environment where industry concerns and retailers alike simply ultimately choose to stop doing business here.
If the state can’t ban an arm under Heller and Bruen, the state can simply make it impossible to sell those arms through draconian commercial regulation. We can therefore expect a torrent of these enforcement actions where every month from here on out, another press conference, another line-up of guest appearances by Bloomberg-backed gun control advocacy groups, and more multi-state “coalitions.”
The Second Amendment is meaningless if the citizenry cannot reasonably acquire arms. And attacking a brand like Glock, when on just their expired patents which implicates dozens of companies that produce Glock clones, is the equivalent of an attempt at a broad-based ban of one of the most widely (commonly) owned firearms in America. Would Palmetto State Armory continue to sell its popular Dagger line knowing that it uses the same Gen3 Glock design (that the AG’s Office now defines as a “switchable firearm”) to New Jersey residents in light of these interpretations by the Attorney General?
The AG attacked retailers in their complaint as well, specifically calling out the Bullet Hole in Belleville and (again) Butch’s Gun World in Vineland simply for being Glock dealers (Butch’s Gun World was one of the targets of their last batch of enforcement actions). Should those retailers conclude that they are next to be targeted for selling Glock products? Again, the point of this lawfare campaign is to create instability and to disable the firearms industry to disarm us. Period.
What Is the Likely Response From Here?
Shortly after Gov. Murphy signed the nuisance law, the National Shooting Sports Foundation challenged it in court on Constitutional grounds. That suit was dismissed at the District Court level and ultimately a three-judge panel at the Third Circuit concurred that the case was premature, reckoning there was no clear indication as to how the state would enforce the law.
It is now clear how they intend to enforce this law, like a sledgehammer. NSSF and others must come back to the table to reboot those legal challenges. In October, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal to Mexico’s suit against gun manufacturers alleging that these manufacturers engage in practices that allow the smuggling of arms to Mexican cartels. The holding in that forthcoming decision will likely have heavy implications for NJ’s nuisance law and its application.
In the meantime, I have suggested that more can be done to proactively protect industry participants. Specifically, the nuisance law pivots off of the arbitrary and capricious interpretation of the AG as to what constitutes “reasonable controls” for firearms industry members. In the absence of clear commercial standards around business practices, there is no easy way to presumptively determine what “reasonable” means. A state chapter of NSSF or some independent state trade association could establish standardized best practices and, in doing so, take control of the issue and dictate what the word “reasonable” means, as well as create a mutual legal defense fund for state industry members.
In the End, This Is a Political Battle in the Court of Public Opinion
This is ultimately a political battle, a form of kabuki theater designed to achieve a public opinion effect. These are frivolous lawsuits, unlikely to ultimately succeed, but in its 69-page complaint, AG Platkin plays on emotion and tries to pull heartstrings. The point of that is clear though. In the recent press conference, Platkin put it plainly,
We know that this work has never been more important. Because we know that the incoming Trump administration routinely sides with the gun industry over common sense gun safety protections.
Platkin is inviting a war with Trump. If the Administration takes the bait and moves to strengthen the PLCAA, Platkin and Democrats-at-large can bring their case to the court of public opinion (setting aside the fact that recent national public polling from Gallup suggests that support for gun control has fallen to the lowest levels in a decade or more).
Repeating a theme, he said last week “When we hold the firearms industry accountable when they break our laws, the same way we hold literally every industry accountable when they break our laws, we can save lives.” Dragging out another of his favorite fallacies, he repeated his prior talking point that “You are six times more likely to be shot and killed in Mississippi than you are in the state of New Jersey.”
According to the American Community Survey compiled by the US Census Bureau, New Jersey has the second-highest median household income in the United States. Mississippi has the lowest median household income in the US. This constant comparison could not be more “apples to oranges.” And it cynically denies the fundamental truth that crime correlates to poverty. This willful blindness occurs against the backdrop of a police department in the State’s capital being investigated by the US Department of Justice for Civil Rights violations. Did AG Platkin hold a press conference responding to these massive problems in Trenton? No.
Platkin additionally touted NJ’s relatively low level of gun violence which he attributed to the state’s aggressive gun control laws (despite the fact that over the period he discussed, federal courts forced NJ to scale back gun control and nearly 50,000 concealed carry permits have been issued in the state since Bruen when obtaining a carry permit had been unthinkable pre-Bruen). His statement that gun violence statistics fell in response to increased gun control is a flat-out lie. The opposite is true, gun violence statistics improved during a period of a net reduction in gun control.
Hypocrisy, misinformation, propaganda, and a touch of racism to add to the pile.
It is clear the goal is to openly terrorize the industry to curtail our rights and they can do so even when the law is not on their side. The PLCAA was enacted for that exact purpose, to prevent frivolous lawsuits designed to cripple an industry that is critical to our national defense. And NJ’s nuisance law was enacted in complete defiance of the federal law.
I will continue to make the case until next fall. 2025 is a state election year. Gun owners cannot simply rely on courts to stop the relentless assault on our rights. These politicians, their broken policies, and twisted priorities must be voted out of office.
We need a massive amount of political activism from gun owners in the coming year.
