§ 128.001.Limitation on Right to Bring Suit or Recover Damages

A prohibition on public-entity litigation, with an unusual approval mechanism.

A governmental unit may not bring suit against a firearms or ammunition manufacturer, trade association, or seller for damages, injunctive relief, or abatement of a nuisance relating to the lawful design, manufacture, marketing, or sale of firearms or ammunition — or against a sport shooting range, its owners or operators, or the landowner, for the lawful discharge of firearms on the range.

The context is the municipal litigation of the late 1990s, when cities across the country sued gun manufacturers on public nuisance theories to recover the public costs of firearm violence. Texas, like most states, legislated to stop it.

Naming nuisance abatement expressly is the point. Those suits were framed as nuisance rather than products liability precisely to avoid the defences products law supplies, and a bar limited to damages would have missed them.

Subsection (c) supplies the approval route: such a suit may be brought if approved in advance by the legislature in a concurrent resolution or by enactment of a law. That converts the question from a litigation decision into a political one.

Subsection (e) preserves the attorney general’s authority to bring the same suit on behalf of the state or another governmental unit. Both subsections add that they do not create a cause of action.

Subsection (d) lists five preserved claims, and they mark the boundary: breach of contract or warranty on firearms the unit bought; damage to the unit’s own property from a defective firearm; personal injury or death by subrogation; injunctive relief to enforce a valid ordinance; and contribution under the proportionate responsibility chapter.

Subsection (f) carves out newer ranges — those beginning operation after September 1, 2011 and operating exclusively within the unit’s limits, excluding extraterritorial jurisdiction — for ordinance enforcement or to require compliance with generally accepted industry standards.