The US Supreme Court is hearing the Mexican lawsuit against US arms companies

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday agreed to a bid by U.S. gun manufacturer Smith & Wesson and firearms wholesaler Interstate Arms to dismiss a Mexican lawsuit accusing them of aiding the illegal firearms trade to Mexican drug cartels.

The justices appealed by the two companies to a lower court’s refusal to dismiss the Mexican lawsuit, filed in 2021 in federal court in Boston, under a 2005 U.S. law that broadly protects gun companies against liability for crimes committed with their products.

The Supreme Court will hear the case during the nine-month term, which begins Monday.

Mexico had originally sued seven U.S. gun manufacturers — Smith & Wesson, Barrett, Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock and Ruger — and Interstate Arms. Six gun manufacturers were later removed from the case on procedural grounds, leaving Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms as the remaining defendants.

The nine-count complaint included allegations that the companies violated state laws by supporting and encouraging the arms trade to Mexican drug cartels, which Mexico has called an “epidemic of violence.”

The lawsuit accused the gun companies of unlawfully designing and marketing their products for the purpose of increasing demand among the cartels, including by associating their “civilian” products with the U.S. military and law enforcement.

It also accused the companies of knowingly maintaining a distribution system that included firearms dealers conspiring with third-party buyers, or “straw buyers,” who traffic weapons to cartels in Mexico.

“Defendants use this head-in-the-sand approach to deny responsibility while knowingly profiting from the criminal trade,” Mexico’s indictment said.

The estimated value of all weapons smuggled from the United States to Mexico — including those made by the defendants and other manufacturers — was more than $250 million annually, according to the lawsuit.

Mexico is seeking monetary damages in an unspecified amount, estimated at billions of dollars, and an injunction requiring the weapons manufacturers to take steps to “reduce and remedy the public nuisance they have caused in Mexico.”

A majority of the 180,000 murders involving guns in Mexico, a country with strict gun laws, between 2007 and 2019 were committed with guns trafficked from the United States, court records in the case show.

According to a 2021 report from the university, up to two-thirds of intentional killings in Mexico in recent years showed signs of organized crime, including the use of powerful weapons, multiple victims, evidence of torture and messages linked to specific criminal groups. of San Diego.

According to the lawsuit, gun violence fueled by smuggled U.S.-made firearms has contributed to a decline in business investment and economic activity in Mexico and has forced the government to incur unusually high costs for services such as health care, law enforcement and the military.

The gun companies, which sought to dismiss the lawsuit, argued that the lawsuit was barred by a 2005 federal law known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which protects firearms manufacturers and distributors from liability for the criminal abuse of their products.

U.S. District Judge Dennis Saylor in Boston sided with the companies in 2022 and dismissed the case, ruling that this law “seeks to prohibit precisely the type of claim currently before this court.”

On appeal, the Boston-based 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed Saylor’s decision in January and ruled that the lawsuit could proceed. The 1st Circuit found that Mexico had plausibly alleged that U.S. gun manufacturers “aided and abetted the knowingly unlawful downstream trade of their weapons into Mexico,” thereby harming the government—conduct that falls outside the protection of that law.

On appeal to the Supreme Court, the companies argued that the lawsuit aims to “bully the industry into passing a host of gun control measures that have been repeatedly rejected by American voters.” REUTERS