Mexico faces off with U.S. gunmakers at the Supreme Court

President Trump says that Mexicans are invading the United States, but at the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday, Mexico is arguing that American gun manufacturers are aiding and abetting an illegal invasion of guns from the United States into Mexico.

Mexico is suing Smith & Wesson and other gunmakers for damages, claiming that they are turning a blind eye to hundreds of thousands of high powered weapons made in the U.S that are illegally trafficked into in the hands of Mexican cartels.

Twenty five years ago, gun manufacturers found themselves facing lawsuits from cities, states, and counties over gun violence. The manufacturers raced to Congress for protection, and Congress obliged with a law giving them broad immunity from liability. But there were exceptions in the law. For instance, the parents of children killed in Newtown, Conn., won $73 million from the maker of the Bushmaster rifle used in the massacre. The families used a marketing exception in the law and argued that the company’s marketing tactics targeted vulnerable young men an encouraged illegal behavior.

While 90% of gun dealers act legally in their gun sales, 5% do not, according to lawyer Jonathan Lowy, co-counsel for Mexico and president of Global Action on Gun Violence.

“Those bad actors sell to obvious cartel traffickers in bulk sales and repeated sales where the traffickers come into the store repeatedly over weeks and months, buying large amounts of AK-47s, AR-15s, sniper rifles that can shoot down helicopters, often paying in cash,” he says. “Manufacturers know who those dealers are, how they’re supplying the cartels, and yet they continue to choose to sell their guns through those dealers, and allowing those sales practices.”

“That’s a flawed argument,” counters Lawrence Keane, counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the trade association for the firearms industry.

“Every sale to a consumer by a licensed retailer is approved by the federal government. Every transactions requires a federally mandated background check,” he says, adding that Mexico is arguing that a “lawful distribution system that’s approved under federal law…is aiding and abetting cartels.”

“If that was all that was required,” he adds, “Budweiser would be responsible for drunk driving accidents all across the United States, and apparently including Mexico.”

Mexico notes that it is a country where guns are supposed to be difficult to get. There is just one store in the whole country where guns can be bought legally, yet the nation is awash in illegal guns sold most often to the cartels. Mexico maintains that gushing pipeline of what it calls “crime guns” comes from the United States where manufacturers know which dealers are the bad actors.

“You can’t hide behind the middleman and pretend like you don’t know what’s happening,” says Lowy, Mexico’s co-counsel .

Keane of the gun manufacturers trade association has a very different view.

“This case by Mexico is an attempt to have regulation through litigation and it’s particularly offensive, candidly, when it is done by a foreign sovereign who comes into the U.S. court and then seeks not just $10 billion in damages” but also seeks to dictate how products can be sold and to whom. “That’s invasion of U.S. sovereignty,” he says.

A decision in the case is expected by summer.