Bernie Sanders voted for the most reprehensible pro-gun legislation in recent memory.

[Unvanguard]

172. Both of the lawsuits you mention follow the lines I described.

In both cases, the plaintiffs sought to hold gun sellers or manufacturers liable for their own practices insofar as those practices enabled violent gun deaths.

The phrasing of the article you quote isn't very helpful. Lots of times, some harm is caused by more than one person's wrongdoing. If I let a drunk person drive my car, and he gets into an accident, of course he (as the driver) caused the accident. But I am still responsible for it insofar as I negligently let him use my car, when I knew or should have known that, since he was drunk, he wouldn't be able to drive it safely. If the injured person sues me, it is true in a sense that I am being sued for someone else's "wrongful acts" (I'm not the one who got into the accident, and if there had been no accident there would be no harm and I wouldn't be liable). But it is more accurate to say that I am being sued for my own wrongful act: me negligently entrusting a drunk person with my car.

Likewise here. The argument of these lawsuits is not that gun manufacturers and dealers are automatically responsible for what their customers do. The argument is that gun manufacturers and dealers are liable when their own wrongdoing enabled violent criminals to get their hands on guns. That's not somehow an out-of-bounds argument to make in a lawsuit. Indeed, PLCAA preserves some of those claims. But it makes it much harder to win on this kind of argument.

I don't think any of these lawsuits should be dismissed under PLCAA. Some of them should probably be dismissed under other grounds. For example, I think the suit against Bushmaster, which effectively argues that sale of a particular product is automatically negligence, probably goes too far by stepping into the legislature's prerogative. But that's what we have courts for, to evaluate legal arguments in particular cases and see whether or not they are meritorious. It's not usually a good idea for legislatures to short-circuit this process for a whole industry. And it is even less of a good idea when it is not state legislatures doing it, but Congress. If one state wants to have more expansive liability principles than another state, why not let them?