In 1999, as much of the country was preoccupied with the looming Y2K computer scare, the City of Gary, Indiana embarked on a very different project: suing the American firearm industry. Gary filed suit against handgun manufacturers, retailers, and a wholesaler, alleging public nuisance, negligent design, negligent distribution and marketing, and failure to warn—all in an effort to hold the industry financially responsible for crimes committed with firearms by third parties.
Gary’s case was not unique. It was one of dozens of nearly identical lawsuits brought by municipalities across the country, coordinated with the support of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the gun control group Brady. The strategy was straightforward: use state tort law to impose crushing liability on firearm manufacturers and retailers, and ultimately drive them out of business through litigation rather than legislation.
That wave of coordinated lawsuits prompted a bipartisan response in Congress. In 2005, lawmakers passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which largely codified long-standing principles of tort law—namely, that a defendant is not responsible for the criminal or reckless acts of a third party absent a special relationship or direct causation. As the statute’s findings explain, these lawsuits were “based on theories without foundation in hundreds of years of the common law,” and threatened to impose industry-wide liability for harms “solely caused by others.” Congress warned that such litigation abused the legal system, endangered a fundamental constitutional right, destabilized lawful industries, and burdened interstate commerce.
In the Gary litigation, defendants raised the PLCAA as a defense, but the trial court initially declared the law unconstitutional, and the appellate court declined to reverse on other grounds. Meanwhile, the Indiana General Assembly amended its own state-level immunity statute to clarify that, as of August 1999, no action could be brought or maintained against the firearm industry for lawful activities related to the design, manufacture, marketing, or sale of firearms and ammunition.
In 2018, a court finally dismissed Gary’s lawsuit under both Indiana’s immunity law and the PLCAA. That ruling triggered yet another round of appeals and procedural maneuvering over whether those laws applied and whether they could be enforced retroactively.
By 2025—six mayors and more than twenty-five years of taxpayer-funded litigation later—Gary’s case stood as the last surviving municipal lawsuit of its kind. Now, it appears to be finished for good.
On December 29, the Indiana Court of Appeals unanimously ordered the case sent back to the trial court with instructions to dismiss it, holding that a 2024 Indiana statute barred the City from proceeding. That law, House Bill 1235—often called the “reservation statute”—provides that only the State of Indiana may bring or maintain an action on behalf of a municipality or political subdivision against firearm or ammunition manufacturers, sellers, dealers, or trade associations regarding specified matters. The statute applies retroactively to any such lawsuit filed before, on, or after August 27, 1999, and explicitly bars political subdivisions from bringing or maintaining such actions on their own.
The Court of Appeals rejected Gary’s argument that the statute amounted to a legislative “end-run” around pending litigation. The legislature, the court explained, expressly authorized retroactive application. Because municipalities are political subdivisions of the state, they occupy a “unique” status compared to private citizens, serving as instrumentalities through which the legislature carries out public policy. The reservation statute fell squarely within the legislature’s authority to reclaim powers it had previously delegated.
The court also concluded that the City had no “vested rights” that could prevent the statute’s application. There can be no vesting without a final, unreviewable judgment—or even a judgment on the merits—which Gary never obtained. As the court observed, the City was not “entitled to have the law as it existed in 1999 or 2001 frozen in time for the duration of the lawsuit.”
The decision marks yet another defeat this year for expansive liability theories aimed at the firearm industry. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the PLCAA barred a lawsuit brought by the Government of Mexico against seven American gun manufacturers. Mexico argued that the companies had “aided and abetted” cartel violence by failing to prevent illegal gun trafficking. In a concurring opinion, Justice Jackson noted that the claim rested on the idea that lawful, industry-wide practices somehow facilitated unspecified downstream violations—exactly the type of theory Congress enacted the PLCAA to foreclose.
Unsurprisingly, gun control activists and sympathetic politicians have increasingly targeted the PLCAA itself. Former President Joe Biden repeatedly called repealing the law one of his top priorities, and his administration worked with state attorneys general to explore ways of using state liability laws to undermine it.
The Indiana ruling likely closes the final chapter of this particular lawsuit. But it does not mark the end of efforts to weaponize courts and legislatures in pursuit of what could not be achieved directly through the democratic process.
