New Jersey’s Gun-Industry Lawfare Backfires as Third Circuit Revives NSSF Challenge

New Jersey tried to trap the firearm industry outside the courthouse.

When the National Shooting Sports Foundation challenged the state’s sweeping “reasonable controls” law before it had been enforced, the Third Circuit ruled that NSSF sued too early. After New Jersey began using the law against firearm manufacturers and sellers, the state argued that NSSF was effectively too late and that the federal courts should stay out.

A unanimous three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit rejected that procedural shell game on September 8, ruling that NSSF has standing and that its constitutional challenge may proceed.

“New Jersey’s proposed rule would create a Catch-22,” Judge David J. Porter wrote in the court’s 24-page opinion. “If the association sued before the enforcement action against one of its members, it would be dismissed for lack of standing, like in NSSF I. If it sued after the enforcement action, it would be dismissed under Younger. Because NSSF, and its members, are ‘entitled to [their] own day in court,’ we reject New Jersey’s proposed rule.”

The ruling does not strike down New Jersey’s law or grant NSSF a preliminary injunction. It does, however, remove the procedural barricade that prevented a federal court from confronting the real question: whether New Jersey enacted a vaguely worded public-nuisance law to evade federal protections for lawful firearm businesses.

New Jersey Targets the Firearm Industry

New Jersey enacted A1765 in 2022. The law applies specifically to firearm manufacturers, distributors, importers, marketers, and sellers, collectively labeled “gun industry members.”

It prohibits those businesses from knowingly or recklessly creating, maintaining, or contributing to a “public nuisance” through the sale, manufacture, distribution, importation, or marketing of a firearm-related product. It also requires them to “establish, implement, and enforce reasonable controls” over those activities. What qualifies as “reasonable” is left dangerously open-ended.

The law gives the New Jersey attorney general authority to bring civil enforcement actions and expressly states that the state need not prove that a firearm business intended to create a public nuisance or cause harm.

NSSF sued, arguing that A1765 violates the First and Second Amendments, the Interstate Commerce Clause, and the Due Process Clause. It also contends that the law is preempted by the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

Congress enacted PLCAA in 2005 to stop abusive lawsuits designed to make lawful firearm manufacturers and sellers pay for crimes committed by unrelated third parties. Those lawsuits were not ordinary attempts to compensate injured parties. They were part of a deliberate campaign to bleed the firearm industry through legal expenses and impose gun-control policies that activists could not pass legislatively.

The federal district court initially entered a preliminary injunction against A1765. It warned that New Jersey’s interpretation of PLCAA’s limited exceptions could “gut the PLCAA” by restoring precisely the kind of liability Congress prohibited.

The Third Circuit vacated that injunction in 2023 without reaching the merits. At that point, New Jersey had not enforced A1765 against anyone. The state also assured the court that it would not prosecute NSSF members merely for participating in lawful commerce and would target only a company’s “own misconduct.”

The court accepted that assurance and found NSSF’s claimed threat of enforcement too speculative to establish standing.

Then New Jersey started suing.

New Jersey’s Lawsuits Changed the Case

Since the first Third Circuit decision, New Jersey has initiated six A1765 enforcement actions against firearm manufacturers and sellers. Two of the targets, Glock and SIG Sauer, are NSSF members.

AmmoLand reported on the first wave in December 2023, when New Jersey filed civil complaints against FSS Armory, Eagle Shows, and JSD Supply. The state accused FSS Armory of improper firearm storage after criminals broke into the store and stole guns. It went after Pennsylvania-based Eagle Shows and JSD Supply over unserialized firearm kits allegedly purchased in Pennsylvania and transported into New Jersey.

That Pennsylvania case mattered directly to NSSF’s standing. The Third Circuit concluded that New Jersey’s attempt to impose liability for conduct occurring outside its borders created a substantial enforcement threat supporting NSSF’s Interstate Commerce Clause claim.

New Jersey did not stop with the businesses. As AmmoLand reported in July 2026, the state filed a separate action seeking to hold JSD Supply founder Jordan Vinroe personally liable after JSD Supply and Eagle Shows entered bankruptcy. That later escalation was not among the six enforcement actions analyzed in the Third Circuit’s opinion, but it shows that New Jersey’s campaign did not end when the targeted companies were financially destroyed.

According to the Third Circuit, the Point Blank complaint did not allege that the store violated any separate state or federal law. The state sent undercover investigators to the store to purchase magazine and ammunition. The store did not request identification for the sale. New Jersey instead treated otherwise lawful conduct as actionable because the state considered it unreasonable.

New Jersey then sued Glock, claiming the company should redesign pistols that criminals can illegally convert using machine-gun conversion devices. AmmoLand covered the lawsuit when New Jersey and Minnesota filed their coordinated actions in December 2024. New Jersey’s theory attempts to shift responsibility away from the criminal who illegally obtains and installs the conversion device and place it on a manufacturer whose pistol operated as designed when it left the factory.

The Glock action prompted NSSF to reopen and amend its challenge to A1765. It also expanded into demands for ten years of lawful Glock sales records from New Jersey dealers, which AmmoLand reported raised serious gun-owner privacy concerns.

New Jersey also sued SIG Sauer over the P320, asserting public-nuisance, product-liability, consumer-fraud, marketing, and “reasonable controls” claims. AmmoLand previously examined that case and SIG Sauer’s response to the state’s allegations. The Third Circuit did not determine whether New Jersey’s allegations are true. It considered the Glock and SIG Sauer complaints as evidence that NSSF members face a genuine threat of enforcement for manufacturing, selling, and marketing firearms.

Those six cases fundamentally changed the standing analysis. The threat was no longer theoretical.

New Jersey was actively using A1765 against firearm businesses, including for commercial conduct that was not independently illegal. The state’s own enforcement campaign supplied the evidence NSSF had lacked in 2023.

The State Tried to Spring a Procedural Trap

After the enforcement actions began, NSSF reopened its federal case and again requested a preliminary injunction. The district court agreed that the “landscape has clearly changed” and found that NSSF now had standing. It nevertheless refused to consider the requested injunction under the Younger abstention doctrine.

Younger generally prevents federal courts from interfering with certain ongoing state proceedings. The district court reasoned that NSSF’s federal challenge could interfere with New Jersey’s pending enforcement action against Glock.

The Third Circuit found a straightforward problem with that conclusion: NSSF is not a defendant in the Glock case—or any of New Jersey’s other enforcement cases.

A federal lawsuit does not become direct interference under Younger merely because its outcome could affect a related state case. If that were enough, states could prevent federal review of questionable laws simply by filing an enforcement action against someone connected to the federal plaintiff.

New Jersey argued that NSSF’s relationship with Glock was sufficiently close because Glock is an NSSF member. The Third Circuit rejected that theory. The narrow exception for closely related parties concerns relationships involving ownership, control, or management. NSSF does not own, manage, or control Glock, and Glock does not control NSSF.

Accepting New Jersey’s position would have threatened associational litigation well beyond the Second Amendment. Whenever a state sued one member of an organization, the organization could be barred from bringing a federal challenge on behalf of all its other members.

The court refused to let New Jersey turn association membership into a tool for avoiding federal review. NSSF and its members, Porter wrote, are entitled to their “own day in court.”

PLCAA Is Now at the Center of the Fight

Although the Third Circuit did not decide NSSF’s claims on the merits, it found them sufficiently plausible to establish standing.

The court recognized that A1765 arguably conflicts with PLCAA by exposing manufacturers and sellers to liability for crimes committed by third parties using lawfully sold products. It also found that the law arguably regulates commerce outside New Jersey, reaches constitutionally protected firearm marketing, is vulnerable to a vagueness challenge, and could burden New Jersey residents’ ability to acquire firearms protected by the Second Amendment.

NSSF’s PLCAA argument has also gained substantial support since the district court first examined A1765.

In 2025, the Supreme Court unanimously rejected Mexico’s lawsuit against Smith & Wesson and other American firearm companies. As AmmoLand previously reported, the Court ruled that plaintiffs cannot evade PLCAA merely by attaching vague aiding-and-abetting allegations to the criminal misuse of lawful products.

The Supreme Court warned that an expansive interpretation of PLCAA’s predicate exception would swallow the law’s protections. That reasoning may present a serious problem for New Jersey’s attempt to manufacture liability through its own firearm-industry-specific public-nuisance statute.

AmmoLand has also covered the Pennsylvania Supreme Court’s unanimous decision upholding PLCAA, reinforcing that lawful firearm companies do not become legally responsible whenever someone else criminally misuses a properly functioning gun.

What Happens Next?

The Third Circuit reversed the district court’s abstention decision. The case now returns to federal district court, where NSSF can pursue its preliminary-injunction motion and challenge A1765 on the merits.

For accuracy, this decision did not:

• Strike down A1765.
• Enjoin New Jersey from enforcing the law.
• Dismiss the state’s cases against Glock, SIG Sauer, or other businesses.
• Finally decide NSSF’s PLCAA or constitutional claims.

But it is still a meaningful victory. New Jersey first escaped review by saying the firearm industry’s fears were speculative. Once the state began filing the very lawsuits NSSF warned about, it tried to use those cases to escape review again. The Third Circuit refused to cooperate.

The Second Amendment protects more than the theoretical possession of a firearm after government officials have sued manufacturers, distributors, and dealers out of existence. Americans cannot exercise the right to keep and bear arms without a lawful commercial infrastructure capable of manufacturing, distributing, and selling those arms.

Congress understood that when it enacted PLCAA. New Jersey’s lawmakers understand it too, which is precisely why they are attempting to work around the federal law.

NSSF has not yet defeated New Jersey’s “reasonable controls” statute. It has won the right to make the state defend that law in federal court. After years of procedural maneuvering, the real fight can finally begin.

About Duncan Johnson:

Duncan Johnson is a lifelong firearms enthusiast and unwavering defender of the Second Amendment—where “shall not be infringed” means exactly what it says. A graduate of George Mason University, he enjoys competing in local USPSA and multi-gun competitions whenever he’s not covering the latest in gun rights and firearm policy. Duncan is a regular contributor and editor-in-chief for AmmoLand News and is responsible for AmmoLand’s daily gun-rights reporting and industry coverage.