Anti-Second Amendment groups got involved in a landmark climate case months before the first lawyer entered the Supreme Court’s chambers to deliver oral arguments in Suncor Energy v. Board of County Commissioners of Boulder County.
Boulder County and the city of Boulder, Colorado, sued Suncor and other energy companies, claiming they misled the public about how fossil fuels affect the climate while continuing to sell them. In a little-reported 41-page brief filed with the Supreme Court in August, Brady United and the Giffords Law Center backed Boulder County, saying that they often sued firearms manufacturers using similar legal theories as the Colorado jurisdiction was using in its suit against energy conglomerates.
“Among the litigation that amici have filed and supported are lawsuits against gun manufacturers for certain conduct alleged to constitute a public nuisance at common law,” the groups said in a statement of interest at the start of the brief. “Amici submit this brief in support of respondents to discuss those suits and other exercises of the States’ police powers through litigation.”
EarthRights International, the Natural Resources Defense Council, Brady, and Giffords are all in the Supreme Court case against Exxon and Suncor. One sues energy and mining companies. One is the country’s biggest environmental law group. Two are the main handgun-control groups, there because they sue gun makers on the same theory and do not want the Court to kill it. They want corporations alone held responsible for the weather and the climate. Do not ask Congress for a ban. Sue the maker, not the user, in state court, ask only for money, and call the product the cause. Win it on oil and the same complaint is ready for guns, then plastics, then cars. Nearly sixty cities are waiting on this one case. Other causes of the weather are not in the lawsuit, because it only works if the corporations are the only ones responsible.
— Jeri Thompson (@jerilthompson) October 1, 2026
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