A group of 27 Republican attorneys general is calling on the Supreme Court to review a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the Mexican government, which seeks to hold U.S. gun manufacturers responsible for the large number of firearms being trafficked across the southern border.
In a filing with the nation’s highest court on May 21, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen, along with 25 of his GOP colleagues, asked the court to hear the case to prevent what they described as a foreign sovereign from “hauling the American firearms industry into court seeking redress for purely extra-territorial harms caused by third-party criminal conduct.”
The speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and president of the Arizona Senate also joined in filing the amicus brief, which argues that anti-gun activists are using the judiciary to attempt to “crush the firearms industry” and take guns away from Americans, in violation of their Second Amendment rights.
In this specific case, Estados Unidos Mexicanos v. Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., the attorneys general argued that “anti-gun activists” are using “legal theories” to find ways to prevent gun purchases and exploit the narrow exceptions in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which was enacted by Congress in 2005.
Under that act, lawsuits against gun manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition are prohibited in U.S. federal and state courts when they seek relief or damages resulting from the misuse of their products by others.
Companies ‘Deliberately Facilitate Gun Trafficking’
The lawsuit was filed by the Mexican government against seven American manufacturers and a distributor—including Smith & Wesson, Glock, Beretta, Barrett, Sturm, and Ruger—in 2021, alleging that the companies “deliberately facilitate gun trafficking” into Mexico.
It further claimed that Mexico has only one gun store in the entire nation where people can legally purchase guns and that fewer than 50 firearm permits are issued annually.
Despite this, the nation has the third most gun-related deaths globally, the lawsuit noted.
The lawsuit further cited rising gun violence statistics, noting that the number of gun-related homicides in Mexico grew from less than 2,500 in 2003 to about 23,000 in 2019. Homicides also rose in recent years, from 15 percent in 1997 to 69 percent in 2021, the lawsuit stated.
The rise in gun violence “correlates with the increase of gun production in the United States” since the end of the ban on so-called assault weapons in the United States, the lawsuit claimed.
“Mexico claims that between 70 and 90 percent of the guns recovered at crime scenes in Mexico were trafficked into the country from the United States,” it read.
Court Rules Lawsuit Can Go Ahead
Yet in January, a ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed that dismissal following an appeal from Mexico, allowing the multi-million dollar lawsuit to go ahead.“Mexico is a sovereign nation,” the group of Republicans wrote in their legal filing with the court. “It can close its borders if it desires to do so, but it chooses not to. Mexico’s policy decisions have caused cartel violence within its borders. And now, the Mexican government has adopted a conscious policy of refusing to address that violence.”
“Mexico should not be permitted to effectively deprive Americans of their Second Amendment rights to alleviate the negative consequences of its own policy choices,” they concluded.
In a statement to The Epoch Times on May 21, Mr. Knudsen said American firearms manufacturers “should not and do not have to answer for the actions of criminals,” citing the PLCAA.
“Mexico’s bad policies created the country’s gun violence problem,” he continued. “Rather than take responsibility, Mexico and anti-gun activists are trying to blame and bankrupt American companies that follow the law. The appeals court erred in their decision and the Supreme Court needs to correct it.”
