Politics
NEW: Supreme Court Delivers Another Unanimous Victory For Conservatives
The Supreme Court handed a major defeat to the Mexican government in its lawsuit against American gun manufacturers on Thursday. The court ruled that the 2021 lawsuit that Mexico brought against seven gun manufacturers in the United States is barred because of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
“As required by a federal statute, Mexico seeks to show (among other things) that the defendant companies participated in the unlawful sale or marketing of firearms,” Justice Elena Kagan stated in the court’s opinion. “More specifically, Mexico alleges that the companies aided and abetted unlawful sales routing guns to Mexican drug cartels. The question presented is whether Mexico’s complaint plausibly pleads that conduct. We conclude it does not.”
The PLCAA was passed by Congress in 2005 to protect gun makers from civil lawsuits that were based on a person’s misuse of a firearm. The Mexican government was claiming the lawsuit they filed was an exception to the law where manufacturers “knowingly violated” statutes related to selling or marketing their weapons.
“But that exception, if Mexico’s suit fell within it, would swallow most of the rule,” Kagan continued. “We doubt Congress intended to draft such a capacious way out of PLCAA, and in fact it did not.”
An investigation published by CBS News alleges there are somewhere between 200,000 and 500,000 firearms made here in the U.S. that are trafficked into Mexico annually.
Interestingly, the whole country of Mexico has only one gun store.
The BBC is reporting that nearly half of the guns recovered at crime scenes across the border are made in the USA. Data for this claim comes from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
“Mexico has not met that bar,” Kagan wrote in the opinion. “Its complaint does not plausibly allege the kind of ‘conscious . . . and culpable participation in another’s wrongdoing’ needed to make out an aiding-and-abetting charge.”
“When a company merely knows that some bad actors are taking advantage of its products for criminal purposes, it does not aid and abet. And that is so even if the company could adopt measures to reduce their users’ downstream crimes,” Kagan finished.
“Today’s decision will end Mexico’s lawsuit against the gun industry, but it does not affect our ability and resolve to hold those who break the law accountable,” David Pucino, the legal director and deputy chief counsel at GIFFORDS Law Center explained. “All survivors, in the United States, in Mexico, and anywhere else, deserve their day in court, and we will continue to support them in their fight for justice.”
