The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Tuesday morning to determine whether the Mexican government can proceed with a $10 billion lawsuit against U.S. gun makers.
Mexico sued U.S. gun makers and one distributor in 2021, arguing that the companies fueled violence across the border by sending an “iron river” of military-style weapons to cartels.
The unusual lawsuit comes before the justices at a time of heightened tension between the two countries, with tariffs imposed by the Trump administration set to take effect early Tuesday.
A majority of the justices may view the case skeptically — the 6-to-3 conservative supermajority has worked to expand gun rights in recent years. But the case has allowed the Mexican government an avenue to make its argument that U.S. companies share in the blame for violence by drug cartels.
Access to guns is tightly controlled in Mexico, and it is nearly impossible for civilians to legally obtain the kinds of military-style weapons favored by the cartels. In their legal filings, lawyers for Mexico cited statistics showing that a majority of guns from Mexican crime scenes — between 70 and 90 percent — come from the United States. They also contend that gun dealers in the states that border Mexico sell twice as many weapons as dealers in other parts of the United States.
The argument before the court is focused on a threshold issue: whether a 2005 federal law prevents such a suit by Mexico against the gun makers. The law, the Protection of Lawful Arms in Commerce Act, was passed after a growing number of lawsuits aimed to hold the gun industry liable in mass shootings in the United States. It prohibits many types of lawsuits against gun manufacturers and sellers — but it allows claims to proceed if plaintiffs can show that their injuries were directly caused by knowing violations of firearms laws.
A federal trial judge in Boston had dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit, finding that it was barred by the 2005 legislation. The judge, F. Dennis Saylor IV, wrote that the law “bars exactly this type of action from being brought in federal and state courts.”
A unanimous three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit disagreed. The appeals court determined that Mexico’s case should be allowed to proceed because its argument that the companies had aided and abetted illegal gun sales in Mexico fit the law’s carve-out for suits.
The gun makers then asked the Supreme Court to take the case, Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, No. 23-1141.
A trial court judge dismissed Mexico’s case against six of the defendants on other grounds, leaving the Supreme Court’s decision in the case to apply to claims against Smith & Wesson, a gun manufacturer, and Interstate Arms, a wholesaler.
Lawyers for Smith & Wesson argued that the legal theory offered by Mexico was a stretch and that the companies could not be sued because they were making and selling firearms legally in the United States.
Lawyers for Mexico argue that the lawsuit should be allowed to proceed, claiming that they have met the basic threshold to show that gun makers have aided and abetted the cartels.
They claim that some manufacturers have made firearms that appear to directly target Mexican buyers, including a special edition .38 pistol engraved with the face of the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata with a quote that has been attributed to him: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.”
