On June 11, 2026, Derek Schmidt introduced a bill in the U.S. House. He gave it a name that sounds like it's about greedy lawyers: the Stopping Harmful and Outrageous Torts Act. The short version is the SHOT Act.

Read what the bill actually says and it is not about lawyers. It is about the families.

Section 2 is one sentence long. Any lawsuit against a gun manufacturer that is sitting in a courtroom on the day this bill becomes law "shall be immediately dismissed by the court in which the action was brought or is currently pending."

Not reviewed. Not argued. Not decided on the facts. Dismissed.

Five days after he filed it, the firearms industry's own trade group — the National Shooting Sports Foundation — put out a press release welcoming it. That is who this bill is for. They didn't have to guess.

What the law does now, and what Schmidt wants it to do

Congress already gave gun makers a shield. In 2005, it passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which blocks most lawsuits against firearms companies when someone criminally misuses their product. It is a level of protection no other consumer industry in America gets.

The 2005 law left a handful of narrow doors open. You can still sue if a dealer knowingly handed a gun to someone who was obviously going to hurt people. You can still sue over a broken product. You can still sue if the company knowingly broke a law about how guns are marketed or sold.

Those doors are how the Sandy Hook families got their day in court. Using Connecticut's consumer protection law, they reached a record $73 million settlement with the maker of the rifle used in that school shooting. That case is the reason 11 states — New York, Delaware, New Jersey, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Washington, Maryland, Connecticut, and Virginia — went on to pass their own gun industry accountability laws.

Schmidt's bill closes those doors and bricks up the wall.

It kills the cases already filed. Section 2, quoted above. Whatever stage a case is in — discovery, trial, appeal — it ends.

It erases the state laws. Section 5 of the bill adds a new preemption section saying the federal shield "expressly preempt[s] any State and local laws" that let people sue gun makers over the criminal misuse of a gun. Those are the exact 11 state laws NSSF names in its release.

It guts the broken-product exception. Under Schmidt's language, if a gun goes off because someone committed a crime with it, that criminal act "shall be considered the sole proximate cause" of the death — even if the gun itself was defective.

It covers more than guns. The bill widens the definition of a protected product to include magazines, clips, optics, and "other products intended to be included in, attached to, or used while attached to" a firearm.

It covers more than companies. The definition of a "seller" is rewritten to include "any owner or employee of the seller," and the definition of a manufacturer is amended to add "any owner and employee of such person." Individual people, personally shielded.

It shields the trade group that endorsed it. All through the bill, the protected parties are "a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product, or a trade association." NSSF is a trade association.

And it makes grieving families pay. Section 4 adds this: "A defendant who prevails in asserting the immunity granted in this Act shall be entitled to reasonable attorney's fees and court costs." Sue a gun company, lose on immunity, and you write a check to the gun company's lawyers. Two states, Arkansas and Indiana, already do that to their own residents. Schmidt would do it to all of us.

The industry didn't need the help

Here's the part that makes the "frivolous lawsuits" framing hard to take seriously: the gun industry is winning.

In June 2025, the Supreme Court threw out the government of Mexico's lawsuit against Smith & Wesson and six other manufacturers. The vote was 9-0, in an opinion written by Justice Kagan — every liberal and every conservative on the Court agreed the existing shield already covered the companies.

Schmidt's bill goes further anyway. It adds a flat ban: "No foreign state or government may bring a civil action" against a gun maker at all, and none of the law's exceptions "may be asserted by any foreign state or government in any Federal or State court." The Supreme Court decided that case unanimously. Schmidt wants the courthouse door welded shut so nobody can even knock.

NSSF's general counsel, Lawrence Keane, described the suits Schmidt is killing as "lawfare" backed by "gun control activists, antigun politicians and large 'white shoe' law firms." He did not mention the plaintiffs. The plaintiffs are cities, state attorneys general, and people who lost somebody.

Kansans are being shot, and their congressman is protecting the manufacturers

Schmidt represents Kansas's 2nd District. About 15.2 out of every 100,000 Kansans die from gun violence every year — roughly 446 people, a rate 18% higher than the national average.

Not one line of the SHOT Act does anything for those 446 people or their families. Every line of it does something for the companies.

This is consistent, at least. Schmidt holds an A+ rating from the NRA, the highest score the group gives out, and he earned it over a career of opposing gun safety measures. What's new here is that he isn't just voting the industry's way. He's the one holding the pen.

The same bill, over and over, for whoever is getting sued

Schmidt sits on the House Judiciary Committee — the committee his bill was referred to, and the committee where this particular move has become routine.

In June, that committee advanced a bill by another Republican that would dismiss roughly 500 already-filed lawsuits by workers dying of silicosis from cutting engineered stone countertops. Same structure: immunity for the manufacturer, retroactive dismissal of pending cases. Earlier this month we wrote up a Wyoming Republican's bill to kill the lawsuits communities file against oil companies over climate damage. Same structure again.

Different industry each time. Same sentence buried in the text: the cases already filed go away.

There's an old idea in this country that if a company hurts you, you can stand in front of a jury of your neighbors and make it prove otherwise. That's the thing being repealed here, one industry at a time. Schmidt spent 12 years as Kansas Attorney General — a job that exists to bring cases on behalf of people who can't bring their own. His exception for law enforcement lawsuits covers "the Attorney General" enforcing federal gun statutes. The state laws that let a state's own attorney general sue? Section 5 preempts those.

He knows exactly what he's taking away. He used to hold it.

Source

NSSF Welcomes House Companion SHOT Act Introduction to End Frivolous Public Nuisance Lawsuits — National Shooting Sports Foundation, June 16, 2026. Bill text: H.R. 9298, 119th Congress. Photo: Official portrait, 119th Congress, via Wikimedia Commons.