The Supreme Court agreed to hear the gun industry’s challenge to the Mexican government’s lawsuit against them.
The Mexican government sued the big gun companies, accusing them of fueling cartel violence in the country. The government also blamed America’s gun laws.
The government wants $10 billion.
“Unless this Court intervenes, the federal courts in the American Northeast are now open to suits by every foreign government that wants to curtail the American firearms industry,” warned the gun companies in their SCOTUS filing. “That is intolerable for a country with a Second Amendment, and for the millions of law abiding citizens who depend on the industry to exercise their constitutional rights.”
The companies added: “Simply put, Mexico’s suit threatens to undermine American sovereignty and constitutional liberty, and it has no business in this country’s courts.”
If the Mexican government wants to blame anyone except for itself because that’d be too easy, it should go after Eric Holder.
Holder’s ATF ran Operation Fast & Furious. Who knows how many guns are in Mexico from that deadly operation?
RIP, Brian Terry.
Plaintiff Estados Unidos Mexicanos (the “Government”), a sovereign nation, brings this action to put an end to the massive damage that the Defendants cause by actively facilitating the unlawful trafficking of their guns to drug cartels and other criminals in Mexico. Almost all guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico—70% to 90% of them—were trafficked from the U.S. The Defendants include the six U.S.-based manufacturers whose guns are most often recovered in Mexico—Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock, and Ruger. Another manufacturer defendant is Barrett, whose .50 caliber sniper rifle is a weapon of war prized by the drug cartels. The remaining defendant—Interstate Arms—is a Boston-area wholesaler through which all but one of the defendant manufacturers sell their guns for re-sale to gun dealers throughout the U.S.
I cannot with these people:
Defendants design, market, distribute, and sell guns in ways they know routinely arm the drug cartels in Mexico. Defendants use reckless and corrupt gun dealers and dangerous and illegal sales practices that the cartels rely on to get their guns. Defendants design these guns to be easily modified to fire automatically and to be readily transferable on the criminal market in Mexico. Defendants know how to make and sell their guns to prevent this illegal trade; the U.S. government and a U.S. court told them how. Defendants defy those recommendations, and many others, and instead choose to continue supplying the criminal gun market in Mexico— because they profit from it.
In early September 2022, U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor in Boston tossed most of the lawsuit: “While the court has considerable sympathy for the people of Mexico, and none whatsoever for those who traffic guns to Mexican criminal organizations, it is duty-bound to follow the law.”
The Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals revived the lawsuit in January:
That law, the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), provides the firearms industry broad protection from lawsuits over their products’ misuse.Mexico’s lawyers argued the law only bars lawsuits over injuries that occur in the U.S. and does not shield the seven manufacturers and one distributor it sued from liability over the trafficking of guns to Mexican criminals.U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta, writing for the three-judge panel, said that while the law can be applied to lawsuits by foreign governments, Mexico’s lawsuit “plausibly alleges a type of claim that is statutorily exempt from the PLCAA’s general prohibition.”
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