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Smith and Wesson Takes Aim at New Jersey’s Attack on the 2nd Amendment

Famed gun maker, Smith and Wesson, is taking aim at New Jersey. The company is suing the Garden State for attacking Smith and Wesson with claims of “false advertising” in order to restrict Second Amendment Rights.

In a federal lawsuit recently filed in New Jersey, Smith & Wesson claims New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal has tried everything in his power to curtail gun sales in his state, and that he is now sifting through decades of company advertisements and marketing materials in an “extra-legal attempt to restrict the right to bear arms.”

In October, Grewal filed administrative subpoenas seeking evidence of fraudulent advertising from the gun manufacturer. The subpoenas request documentation related to advertisements that claim firearms make a home safer, an untrained homeowner could use a Smith & Wesson firearm safely and effectively to defend his home, and whether guns enhance one’s lifestyle.

“The Subpoena presents no legitimate inquiry into any purported fraud, and instead targets mere opinions and other protected statements allegedly made by Smith & Wesson,” the company claims. It seeks a court order enjoining the subpoenas and declaring them unconstitutional.

Citing 248 million results in Google searches of “do guns make you safer” as proof that many Americans believe firearms make them safer, Smith & Wesson says New Jersey’s false advertisement subpoenas should be a dead-end legal theory.

Smith & Wesson also says the subpoenas are politically motivated, noting that Grewal has partnered with several anti-Second Amendment groups, like Do Not Stand Idly By, to seek new methods to restrict gun ownership.

“Smith & Wesson is a good corporate citizen that is a leader on gun safety initiatives in the industry,” the lawsuit states. “What the Attorney General seeks to do through his actions is impermissible as long as the guarantees of free speech and the right to bear arms remain in the Constitution.”

In 2018, the Governor of NJ, Phil Murphy, a Democrat, announced that gun manufacturers would be listed in monthly reports showing the source for every “crime gun” recovered by police in the state.

Gun manufacturers have called that kind of “Name and Shame” legislation in NJ and other states, unreasonable and purely “agenda-driven,” likening it to announcing which car was used in a drunk driving fatality.

In this suit in particular, S&W said, “The intentional overreach of the facially invalid Subpoena and punitive intent of the Attorney General’s ‘name and shame’ initiative makes no sense as an exercise of prosecutorial authority, but they make perfect sense when seen for what they really are – the latest chapter in efforts by anti-Second Amendment Activists, hostile to the private ownership of firearms, to impose, through coercion, a gun control agenda which they largely have been unable to impose through federal or state legislative process or through the courts…”