MEXICO — As President Donald Trump pressures Mexico to address the flow of migrants and drugs heading north into the United States, the Supreme Court is set to hear arguments Tuesday in a major appeal about one thing that’s crossing the border toward Mexico: guns.

Mexico sued Smith & Wesson and six other major US gun makers in 2021 for $10 billion in damages, alleging that the companies design and market their guns specifically to drug cartels that then use them in the “killing and maiming of children, judges, journalists, police, and ordinary citizens throughout Mexico.”

The Supreme Court agreed to review the case last October, a month before Trump was elected to a second term. Since then, US-Mexican relations have been upended as Trump threatens tariffs – including a new round set to take effect on Tuesday – to pressure the Mexican government.

The case does not center on the Second Amendment, but gun-control and gun rights groups are nevertheless closely engaged in the fight.

“The gun industry defendants are trying to use this case to rewrite the law and dramatically expand their immunity to include actions that break the law,” David Pucino, legal director with the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence told CNN. “The Supreme Court should reject that dangerous invitation to shut the courthouse door on victims of gun violence.”

The Mexican government argues that between 70% and 90% of guns recovered at crime scenes in its country are made in the United States. There is only one gun store in all of Mexico, its lawyers said, and “yet the nation is awash in guns.”

NRA slams Mexico’s suit

Gun rights groups, including the National Rifle Association, say that the lawsuit is an effort to “destroy” the American firearms industry by making it easier to sue for huge sums, despite a 2005 law meant to protect gun makers from an increasing number of lawsuits filed by Democratic governors and mayors nationwide.

The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act generally shields gunmakers from liability for crimes committed with their products. An exception permits those suits when there’s a close connection between the harm – in this case, the use of guns in Mexico – and the companies’ actions.

“Mexico has extinguished its constitutional arms right,” the NRA told the Supreme Court in a brief. “Now (it) seeks to extinguish America’s.”

A win for Mexico would allow its case to move forward in federal court.

Mexico alleges the manufacturers are aiding and abetting the purchase of firearms by cartels by selling to dealers known to supply to them. It also argues the gunmakers have resisted design changes to their products – such as making serial numbers harder to tamper with – that would make the guns less appealing to gangs because the weapons could more easily be traced.

The manufacturers, Mexico said in court documents, advertise the guns as “military-grade” and design special-edition products like the Super “El Jefe” pistol the country says are targeted for sale to gangs.

“The Supreme Court is facing a choice: Hold the American gun industry accountable for fueling organized crime at the southern border or give American manufacturers near total immunity,” Hudson Munoz, executive director of Guns Down America told CNN. “This case is not about the Second Amendment – it’s about whether an industry can facilitate illegal arms trafficking, destabilize a neighboring country, and face zero consequences.”

A federal district court backed the gun makers, but the Boston-based 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals concluded Mexico’s suit could go forward. The gun companies appealed to the Supreme Court in April.

Guns, cartels and social media

The 6-3 conservative Supreme Court is expected to take a skeptical view of Mexico’s suit, in part because of a decision it handed down just two years ago in a case dealing with the social media company now known as X.

In Twitter v. Taamneh, the family of a victim killed in a 2017 terrorist attack in Turkey tried to sue the social media giant for contributing to the attack because it hosted content helping ISIS recruit followers and raise money. In a unanimous decision, the court said the connection between the content at issue and the attack wasn’t closely related enough to allow the family to sue.

It’s a point the gun manufacturers are quick to highlight in their written arguments. The short version, according to the companies, is that they have no control over what people do with the guns they make.

“This court has repeatedly held that it requires a direct connection between a defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury,” the gun manufacturers told the high court in their appeal. “In its zeal to attack the firearms industry, Mexico seeks to raze bedrock principles of American law that safeguard the whole economy.”

But the appeals court ruling in favor of Mexico, which was also unanimous, said that the gunmakers’ conduct may have been something more than what was alleged against X. All three appeals court judges who reviewed Mexico’s case were appointed by Democratic presidents.

“They are not mere passive observers of the buyer’s illegal activity,” the three-judge panel wrote, “but more akin to a calculated and willing participant in the supply chain that ends with a profitable illegal firearm market in Mexico.”

The-CNN-Wire
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