The Supreme Court will decide whether Mexico may sue gun manufacturers in the U.S. for aiding the trafficking of weapons used by drug cartels. Mexico sued seven gun makers and a distributor in 2021, blaming them for violence caused by illegal gun trafficking from the U.S., encouraged by the demand of drug cartels for military-style weapons. The lawsuit said the carnage was “the foreseeable result of the defendants’ deliberate actions and business practices.” Mexico has strict gun control laws that it says make it virtually impossible for criminals to obtain firearms legally. Indeed, the suit said, its single gun store issues fewer than 50 permits a year, yet gun violence is rampant, reports the New York Times.
The lawsuit, which seeks billions of dollars in damages, said that 70 to 90 percent of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico came from the U.S. and that gun dealers in border states sold twice as many firearms as dealers in other parts of the country. Federal judge Dennis Saylor in Boston dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit, saying it was barred by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a 2005 law that prohibits many kinds of suits against makers and distributors of firearms. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit revived the suit, saying that it qualified for an exception to the law, which authorizes claims for knowing violations of firearms laws that are a direct cause of the plaintiff’s injuries. Urging the high court to hear the case, gun makers said that “Mexico’s suit has no business in an American court.” They called Mexico’s legal theory an “eight-step Rube Goldberg, starting with the lawful production and sale of firearms in the United States and ending with the harms that drug cartels inflict on the Mexican government.” The Wall Street Journal has this guide to U.S. guns that the Mexican cartels want most.
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