The government of Mexico is sues American arms manufacturers for their role in facilitating cross-border arms trade supercharged violent crime in Mexico.
The lawsuit seeks $10 billion damages and an injunction ordering the businesses named in the lawsuit – including Smith & Wesson, Colt, Glock, Beretta and Ruger – to alter the best way they do business. In January, a federal appeals court in Boston decided that the industry’s immunity shield, which has previously protected arms manufacturers from civil liability, doesn’t apply to Mexico’s lawsuit.
How law expert who has analyzed court processes against the arms industry for over 25 years, I imagine the choice to permit Mexico to proceed its lawsuit might be a game changer. To understand why, let’s start with some information concerning the federal law that protects the gun industry from civil lawsuits.
Inviolability of the arms industry
In 2005, Congress passed Act on the protection of legal trade in weaponswhich prohibits lawsuits against firearms manufacturers and sellers for injuries resulting from the illegal use of firearms for criminal purposes.
What is necessary, there are limits to this immunity shield. For example this doesn’t protect a manufacturer or seller who has “knowingly violated a state or federal law applicable to the sale or marketing” of a firearm. Mexico lawsuit alleges that U.S. gun manufacturers aided and abetted the illegal sale of weapons to gun dealers in violation of federal law.
Mexico’s allegations
Mexico says U.S. arms makers engaged in “deliberate efforts to create and maintain an illicit market for their weapons in Mexico“
The lawsuit alleges that manufacturers intentionally design their weapons to appeal to criminal organizations in Mexico, including features comparable to easy conversion to totally automatic fire, compatibility with high-capacity magazines and removable serial numbers.
Mexico also points to industry marketing that guarantees buyers a tactical military experience for civilians. Mexico, meanwhile, maintains that manufacturers distribute their products to dealers they know function transit points for the illicit arms trade. straw salesunlicensed sales at gun shows and on the Internet, and off-the-book sales disguised as stock theft.
In short, Mexico argues that the illicit arms trade is not merely an unwanted byproduct of industry design decisions, marketing campaigns and distribution practices. Instead, in accordance with the lawsuit, a core element of the industry’s business model is to fulfill demand for illegal weapons.
Arturo Hernandez/Eyepix Group/Future Publishing via Getty Images
In answer, – insist weapons manufacturers that Mexico’s try and hold them legally responsible for the criminal activities of others is precisely the form of lawsuit that the federal immunity shield was intended to dam. They argue that merely selling a product that somebody would later use in against the law doesn’t constitute a violation of federal law, which might strip the manufacturer of immunity. Additionally, gun makers argue that although the Immunity Act doesn’t bar Mexico’s lawsuit, they haven’t any legal obligation to stop criminal violence occurring outside the U.S.
Next legal steps
In January 2024, a federal appeals court in Massachusetts decided that Mexico’s allegations, if true, would strip gun makers of immunity and referred the case back to the court of first instance for reconsideration. Mexico must now provide evidence to support its allegations that the industry is not only aware of the illegal arms trade but actively facilitates it.
Additionally, to win, Mexico could have to persuade a Boston jury that manufacturers’ design decisions, marketing campaigns and distribution practices are closely enough tied to street crime in Mexico to account for the businesses responsible for the issue. This is often called “direct cause“in law.
For their part, the gun manufacturers asked the trial judge to achieve this postpone the matter until later while they seek an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. However, The Supreme Court was reluctant considering cases related to the arms industry until they’re resolved in lower courts, where nearly all of them are they’re fired and several they settled down.
High stakes for the industry
If Mexico wins the lawsuit, its demand for $10 billion in damages could prompt several of the country’s largest firearms producers bankruptcy. Even if the case were to settle for much less, a Mexican victory would set the template for a wave of future lawsuits that would change the best way the weapons industry operates.
Similar theories about unsafe product designs, irresponsible marketing, and reckless distribution practices in opioid litigation have transformed the pharmaceutical industry. Civil lawsuits forced drug manufacturers to achieve this take public responsibility as a result of the nationwide health crisis, change the best way they do business AND pay billions of dollars in judgments and settlements.
Mexico’s lawsuit raises the prospect that the gun industry can be next.