The Supreme Court delivered a significant setback to the Mexican government on Thursday, ruling unanimously that its 2021 lawsuit against seven U.S. gun manufacturers is prohibited under 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.”
Congress passed the PLCAA in 2005 to shield gun manufacturers from civil lawsuits stemming from the misuse of firearms by others as Democrats and their allied groups geared up to sue the industry into dust. In its lawsuit, the Mexican government argued that its case qualified for an exception under the law, claiming the manufacturers had “knowingly violated” statutes related to the sale and marketing of their firearms.
“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 by CBS News estimates that between 200,000 and 500,000 firearms manufactured in the United States are trafficked into Mexico each year. Notably, Mexico has only one legally operating gun store in the entire country. According to the BBC, nearly half of all firearms recovered at crime scenes in Mexico originate from the U.S., based on data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.
But the high court, in its ruling, noted that U.S. firearms makers were not responsible for trafficking their products directly into the hands of Mexican cartels anymore than an automaker is responsible for someone driving one of their vehicles while drunk and harming another person.
“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 wrote.
