NEW YORK, May 1 (UPI) -- A federal appeals court has thrown out New York's longstanding lawsuit against the gun industry.

The judges said a new federal law protects gun makers against such suits. The suit, aimed at stemming the flow of illegal guns into the city, claimed that gun makers and distributors have knowingly flooded illicit, underground New York markets with their weapons, The New York Times said Thursday.

The lawsuit, filed in 2000, was upheld in December 2005 despite protests by several gun makers that a federal law passed two months earlier shielded them from suits.

That law banned all suits against the gun industry except those in which it can be proved gun makers violated state or federal statutes in their sales and marketing practices.