United States: Friday, the Supreme Court said it will decide whether Mexico can try to make fire US gunmakers liable for violence that drug cartels sow in Mexico.
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Filing the first suit by a national government against the gun industry, Mexico is seeking billions of dollars in damages and new gun control measures.
At issue before the Supreme Court is a simple question of whether federal law protects gunmakers and gun dealers when their products are used to commit a crime.
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In 2022, a federal district court ruled it did, but the case went forward while the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed it.
The appeals court ruled in January the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act applies only to ‘lawful’ actions.
According to a three-judge panel, while noting that those allegations must still be proved in court, Mexico “adequately alleges that defendants aided and abetted the knowingly unlawful downstream trafficking of their guns into Mexico,” USA Today reported.
Smith & Wesson and its wholesaler Witmer Public Safety Group asked the Supreme Court to review that decision.
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Mexico’s complaints against six other companies included in the suit were dismissed in August by a judge in Boston because the companies are not based in Massachusetts.
Mexico had not yet shown that arms sold by these companies in Massachusetts were illegally trafficked to Mexico, Saylor said.
Seventy percent to 90 percent of the guns found at crime scenes in Mexico were trafficked from the U.S., Mexico says.
Gun regulations in Mexico vary quite differently than in the U.S. Only two stores in the entire nation are allowed to sell one, and they can only be bought after months of paperwork and registering with the law.
That means a plurality of gun crimes are committed with smuggled American firearms, USA Today reported.
Gun makers in the US know how this is happening, Mexico says. But even with the lawsuit, manufacturers keep supplying some of those guns to some of the dealers, who then sell them to straw buyers in bulk, who sell them in bulk to cartels, according to the lawsuit.
Moreover, the gunmakers also make the weapons military-style so that they could be more attracted by cartels and make it easier to remove the serial numbers, Mexico says.
