In 2022, New Jersey enacted gun industry accountability legislation that places new obligations and prohibitions on members of the firearm industry and authorizes the State Attorney General to file civil lawsuits to proactively enforce and remedy any violations of this law.¹ This law took effect immediately on July 5, 2022.²

This law requires gun industry members (as defined)³ to comply with certain requirements and prohibitions (detailed below) when engaged in the sale, manufacture, distribution, importing, or marketing of firearms, ammunition, firearm parts, and other “gun-related products” affecting New Jersey.⁴

First, the law prohibits a gun industry member, by conduct that is unlawful in itself or unreasonable under all the circumstances, from knowingly or recklessly creating, maintaining, or contributing to a public nuisance through the sale, manufacturing, distribution, importing, or marketing of a gun-related product.⁵

Second, the law requires a gun industry member to establish, implement, and enforce “reasonable controls” (as defined in the law)⁶ regarding its manufacture, sale, distribution, importing, and marketing of gun-related products in order to prevent specified harms, and establishes that it is an illegal public nuisance to violate this requirement.⁷ More specifically, this law requires gun industry members to establish, implement, and enforce reasonable procedures, safeguards, and business practices that are designed to:

(1)Prevent the sale or distribution of a gun-related product to any of the following:

• A straw purchaser;
• A firearm trafficker;
• A person who is legally disqualified from possessing a firearm under state or federal law;
• A person who the gun industry member has reasonable cause to believe is at substantial risk of using a gun-related product to harm themselves or another person, or of using a gun-related product unlawfully;⁸

(2) Prevent the loss or theft of a gun-related productfrom a gun industry member;⁹ and

(3) Ensure that the gun industry member complies with all provisions of State and federal law, including but not limited to specified New Jersey laws and regulations governing firearms and prohibiting fraudulent, deceptive, or unconscionable sale and advertising practices.¹⁰

(4) Ensure the gun industry member does not promote the unlawful sale, manufacture, distribution, importing, marketing, possession, or use of a gun-related product.¹¹

New Jersey’s law authorizes the state Attorney General to file a civil action against a gun industry member when it appears to the Attorney General that the gun industry member has engaged in, or is engaging in, conduct that violates the requirements and prohibitions detailed above.¹² The lawsuit may seek an injunction prohibiting the gun industry member from continuing the illegal conduct or engaging in or doing any acts in furtherance of that conduct, as well as an order providing for abatement of the nuisance at the industry defendant’s expense, restitution, damages, reasonable attorneys’ fees and legal costs, and any other appropriate relief.¹³

The law also provides the Attorney General with proactive civil oversight and investigative authority to investigate gun industry members’ suspected violations of the law when it appears to the Attorney General that a gun industry member has engaged in, is engaging in, or is about to engage in conduct that violates this law, or when the Attorney General believes it is in the public interest that an investigation should be made to ascertain whether a gun industry member has in fact engaged in, is engaged in, or is about to engage in unlawful conduct that violates this law.¹⁴

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1. See 2022 NJ AB 1765 (codifying N.J. Stat. Ann. §§ 2C:58-33 through 2C:58-36).[↩]
2. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-36.[↩]
3. The term “Gun industry member” is defined to mean “a person engaged in the sale, manufacturing, distribution, importing or marketing of a gun-related product, and any officer, agent, employee, or other person authorized to act on behalf of that person or who acts in active concert or participation with one or more such persons. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-34.[↩]
4. The term “gun-related product” is defined to mean “any firearm, ammunition, ammunition magazine, firearm component or part including, but not limited to, a firearm frame and a firearm receiver, or firearm accessory, which product was, or was intended to be, sold, manufactured, distributed, imported, or marketed in this State, or which product was possessed in this State and as to which it was reasonably foreseeable that the product would be possessed or used in this State.” N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-34.[↩]
5. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-35(a)(1).[↩]
6. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-34).[↩]
7. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-35(a)(3).[↩]
8. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-34 (defining “Reasonable controls”); N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-35(a)(2).[↩]
9. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-34 (defining “Reasonable controls”); N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-35(a)(2).[↩]
10. N.J. Stat. Ann. §§ 2C:58-34 (defining “Reasonable controls”); 2C:58-35(a)(2). See also, N.J. Stat. § 56:8-2 (governing “Fraud, etc., in connection with sale or advertisement of merchandise or real estate as unlawful practice”).[↩]
11. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-34 (defining “Reasonable controls”); N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-35(a)(2).[↩]
12. N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-35(b).[↩]
13. Id.[↩]
14. See N.J. Stat. Ann. § 2C:58-35(d).[↩]