{"id":115323,"date":"2026-02-26T10:47:33","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:47:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=115323"},"modified":"2026-02-26T10:47:33","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T16:47:33","slug":"115323","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=115323","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

Firearm industry ‘responsible controls’ legislation is existential threat to gun owners<\/a><\/p>\n

Anti-gun activists think they have figured out a way around the Second Amendment, democratic accountability, and the federal\u00a0Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA)<\/a>\u00a0to impose a limitless raft of gun control on the American people.<\/p>\n

The strategy is to enact what civilian disarmament advocates term \u201cfirearm industry responsibility\u201d laws in anti-gun states. These laws impose a duty on members of the firearms industry to institute \u201creasonable controls\u201d over the sale and distribution of their products, on top of the mountains of explicit state and federal statutes and regulations they are tasked to comply with, lest they face ruinous civil liability.<\/p>\n

The term \u201creasonable controls\u201d is vague and ill-defined, resulting in the decidedly unreasonable circumstance where gun industry members can\u2019t know how to comply with the law. These statutes empower anti-gun government officials to abuse the vague language in a manner that imposes ever-expanding restrictions on the industry and its customers, limited only by the officials\u2019 imagination. Moreover, this legislation impacts not just firearms dealers, manufacturers, and distributors as they would be understood under federal law, but includes any business involved in the stream of commerce for ammunition or any other firearm-related products.<\/p>\n

The goal is to use the threat of devastating civil liability to force the firearms industry to restrict the rights of themselves and their customers by instituting gun controls that were not enacted (and often rejected) through the democratic process and may be found unconstitutional if imposed directly by government. The entire enterprise is a grotesque and cynical evasion of democratic accountability and constitutional review.<\/p>\n

Thus far, 10 states have enacted versions of this legislation, with extremist gun control advocates in Virginia also seeking to enact a variant (HB21) at present.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

New Jersey is the roadmap<\/h4>\n

To illustrate how gun control advocates seek to use this legislation, consider New Jersey.<\/p>\n

The Garden State has some of the nation\u2019s strictest gun control laws; it is difficult even for well-meaning people and businesses to thread their way through them to exercise their Second Amendment rights. On top of those laws, in 2022, the state enacted\u00a0new requirements<\/a>\u00a0for each \u201cgun industry member\u201d to \u201cestablish, implement, and enforce reasonable controls regarding its manufacture, sale, distribution, importing, and marketing of gun-related products.\u201d<\/p>\n

On July 22, 2025, a judge from the Chancery Division of the Superior Court of New Jersey granted Attorney General Matthew Platkin\u2019s motion for summary judgement against Butch\u2019s Gun World of Vineland in an enforcement action of the \u201creasonable controls\u201d statute. The court also granted the AG\u2019s request to force the shop to comply with a list of requirements that go well beyond codified law.<\/p>\n

The case concerned two undercover buys from the shop by agents of the AG\u2019s office. The first was a box of .223-caliber ammunition and a 6-round magazine for a Walther .380 caliber pistol. The second was a 1,000 round case of .223-caliber ammunition. The buyer in each case paid cash.<\/p>\n

New Jersey law imposes various explicit (and likely unconstitutional) requirements for the sale of \u201chandgun ammunition.\u201d Sellers must be licensed gun businesses. Buyers who are not so licensed must display a valid Firearms Purchaser Identification Card, a permit to purchase a handgun, or a permit to carry a handgun. Retail sellers of handgun ammunition must record sales and make these records available to state authorities. Sales of 2,000 or more rounds must be \u201cimmediately\u201d reported to the State Police.<\/p>\n

Following the undercover buys, the state AG initiated a civil enforcement action against Butch\u2019s Gun World under the reasonable controls statute. Significantly, the complaint did not claim .223-caliber ammunition or the Walther magazine were \u201chandgun ammunition\u201d nor claim the sales were a direct violation of the \u201chandgun ammunition\u201d requirements.<\/p>\n

Instead, the complaint relied entirely on the idea that Butch\u2019s Gun World had an affirmative duty under the reasonable controls law to apply additional safeguards to the sales of \u201cgun-related products\u201d beyond those specifically dictated by the New Jersey legislature. These \u201cproducts,\u201d moreover, include not just all types of firearms and ammunition, but \u201cany \u2026 ammunition magazine, firearm component or part including, but not limited to, a firearm frame and a firearm receiver, or firearm accessory \u2026.\u201d<\/p>\n

The complaint asserted, for example, that Butch\u2019s Gun World should have understood the \u201creasonable controls\u201d statute as extending certain requirements of the \u201chandgun ammunition\u201d statutes to ALL \u201cgun-related products,\u201d even though there is no language in the laws that actually specifies this.<\/p>\n

Indeed, it would be odd (to say the least), that the New Jersey legislature would have been so specific as to the sales requirements for \u201chandgun ammunition\u201d if it had meant for the same sales requirements to apply to EVERY conceivable \u201cgun related product.\u201d This would violate the ancient legal principle of expressio unius est exclusio alterius, which means the express mention of one thing in a legal enactment implies the exclusion of all others.<\/p>\n

To give such a reading to these two laws would seem, instead, to attribute to the legislature an intent to hide the ball and deceive gun industry members as to their legal responsibilities.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, New Jersey\u2019s anti-gun AG managed to get a court to extend statutory requirements that apply to one specific category of ammunition to a whole universe of products never actually subjected to those requirements by the legislature. Butch\u2019s Gun World must, according to the AG\u2019s office, now comply with the following requirements for sales of ALL gun-related products:<\/p>\n