Codename.W.A 🦊🔫

I was just subpoenaed in an anti-gun lawsuit...for being a guntuber. Link to the lawsuit is below. The case is Roberts v. Smith & Wesson, and it's the same playbook, almost copy+paste, of the Soto v. Bushmaster "Sandy Hook" lawsuit against Remington, which put them out of business. This one arises from the Highland Park July 4 shooting, where the killer used an M&P15. The plaintiffs are of course attempting to blame S&W for the incident and the theory, you guessed it, "negligent marketing." They say S&W appealed to young men interested in militaristic imagery and that this influenced the shooter to select the M&P15, and that this more or less was a cause of this incident. Insanity. Now they are reaching beyond S&W and into firearms media. I was served with a subpoena demanding years of info and analytics from me about S&W and reviews I've done. The part that should concern my fellow gun reviewers: Their subpoena defines an "Advertisement" to include even unpaid organic social-media content. In other words, by the plaintiffs' definition, even an independent review of a lawful product is "advertising," and they think they are entitled to any info that touches on essentially any YouTube video about the M&P15 during the relevant period. This is EXACTLY the end-run around the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that led me to draft what became the PLCAA Clarification Act. The PLCAA was enacted to protect manufacturers from lawfare over crimes committed by third parties. Plaintiffs have increasingly pleaded around that protection after the Soto case by using "negligent marketing" as a loophole, which defeats the purpose of the PLCAA. Versions of the PLCAA Clarification Act I wrote have now been enacted in West Virginia, Montana, and Kentucky. I've been told Kentucky has already dismissed a frivolous lawsuit with it. Consider contacting your legislators and looping me on on the email so we can keep the PLCAA Clarification Act passage rolling. Illinois obviously is not going to pass it. But Congress can. And whatever your politics on guns, there is a larger issue here: If a manufacturer sends a journalist or creator a product to independently test, that does not magically transform the resulting review into advertising. Treating independent editorial coverage as corporate marketing merely because someone reviewed a lawful product is a dangerous theory that reaches far beyond the gun industry. One final note for people in the gun media space: if you receive one of these subpoenas, do not ignore it and do not start deleting anything. Feel free to contact me and we can discuss whether I can assist with your response or coordinate with appropriate local counsel.