These are excerpts from an article by Douglas Andrews as it appeared in Patriot Post.
On Tuesday, that failed state to our south had its day in court, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against S&W and six other American gun manufacturers. The massive suit alleges that the gunmakers are intentionally marketing their weapons to the Mexican drug cartels, which then use them to slaughter children, judges, journalists, cops, and anyone else who gets in their way.
As CBS News reports: “The legal battle marks the first time that the Supreme Court will consider a federal law known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA. Enacted with bipartisan support from Congress in 2005, the law provides a legal shield for gun companies from civil suits seeking to hold them liable for harms stemming from the criminal misuse of their products by another person.”
Thankfully, it looks like the High Court is poised to give the Mexican government a good stiff-arm. If the tone of Tuesday’s arguments is any indication, even the Supremes’ liberal wing seems disinclined to hold law-abiding American companies accountable for the firearms that are regularly trafficked across our southern border.
At issue is whether the suit can move forward because it rates an exception to PLCAA’s liability shield. That exception says that gunmakers and sellers can be sued if they knowingly broke the law and thereby injured Mexico, whose government claims that the defendants are “aiding and abetting the unlawful sale of their firearms to straw purchasers, which are then trafficked across the southern border for the cartels.”
Justice Elena Kagan wondered who, exactly, the gunmakers are “aiding and abetting in this complaint,” while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the lawsuit doesn’t even seem to be alleging that the gunmakers knowingly violated the law.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for his part, worried about the slippery slope that might lead to liability and lawsuits against other lawful American industries.
The defendants’ lawyer, Noel Francisco, points to the Rube Goldbergian nature of the plaintiffs’ blame game: “That chain starts with the federally licensed manufacturers, flows to wholesalers who sell to licensed dealers, who then engage in unlawful sales of guns that are trafficked into Mexico and land with the cartels. The final links are the guns being used to commit crimes that injure property and people, and the Mexican government being forced to spend money to respond to that fallout.”
Can the gunmakers be legally liable because they know that some small share of weapons end up being sold illegally and because they don’t do more to stop it? Francisco responds: “No case in history supports that theory.”
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Trump Attorney General William Barr calls the Mexican government’s theory of liability “absurd,” noting that the “age-old doctrine of ‘proximate cause’ ensured that parties can be held liable only for harms that are the direct and immediate consequence of their own actions.”
Barr adds that the tactic of bankrupting the gun industry via an onslaught of nuisance litigation had been tried before: “In the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists in deep-blue state and local governments invented novel tort theories to hold America’s legal and heavily regulated gun industry responsible for urban crime.”
It didn’t work then, and it shouldn’t work now, Barr believes. He points to Mexico’s failure to stand up to the cartels. “Violence continued and the cartels tightened their grip on Mexican society,” he writes. “What better way to deflect blame than to claim that the American gun industry was responsible for the cartels’ success?”
This, it seems to us, is the real issue: The Mexican government is unable to protect its people, and it’s trying to set up the American gun manufacturing industry as the “proximate cause” fall guy.
My sense is that the Supreme Court isn’t buying it.
On Tuesday, that failed state to our south had its day in court, as the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, a $10 billion lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against S&W and six other American gun manufacturers. The massive suit alleges that the gunmakers are intentionally marketing their weapons to the Mexican drug cartels, which then use them to slaughter children, judges, journalists, cops, and anyone else who gets in their way.
As CBS News reports: “The legal battle marks the first time that the Supreme Court will consider a federal law known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA. Enacted with bipartisan support from Congress in 2005, the law provides a legal shield for gun companies from civil suits seeking to hold them liable for harms stemming from the criminal misuse of their products by another person.”
Thankfully, it looks like the High Court is poised to give the Mexican government a good stiff-arm. If the tone of Tuesday’s arguments is any indication, even the Supremes’ liberal wing seems disinclined to hold law-abiding American companies accountable for the firearms that are regularly trafficked across our southern border.
At issue is whether the suit can move forward because it rates an exception to PLCAA’s liability shield. That exception says that gunmakers and sellers can be sued if they knowingly broke the law and thereby injured Mexico, whose government claims that the defendants are “aiding and abetting the unlawful sale of their firearms to straw purchasers, which are then trafficked across the southern border for the cartels.”
Justice Elena Kagan wondered who, exactly, the gunmakers are “aiding and abetting in this complaint,” while Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that the lawsuit doesn’t even seem to be alleging that the gunmakers knowingly violated the law.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, for his part, worried about the slippery slope that might lead to liability and lawsuits against other lawful American industries.
The defendants’ lawyer, Noel Francisco, points to the Rube Goldbergian nature of the plaintiffs’ blame game: “That chain starts with the federally licensed manufacturers, flows to wholesalers who sell to licensed dealers, who then engage in unlawful sales of guns that are trafficked into Mexico and land with the cartels. The final links are the guns being used to commit crimes that injure property and people, and the Mexican government being forced to spend money to respond to that fallout.”
Can the gunmakers be legally liable because they know that some small share of weapons end up being sold illegally and because they don’t do more to stop it? Francisco responds: “No case in history supports that theory.”
In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, former Trump Attorney General William Barr calls the Mexican government’s theory of liability “absurd,” noting that the “age-old doctrine of ‘proximate cause’ ensured that parties can be held liable only for harms that are the direct and immediate consequence of their own actions.”
Barr adds that the tactic of bankrupting the gun industry via an onslaught of nuisance litigation had been tried before: “In the late 1990s and early 2000s, activists in deep-blue state and local governments invented novel tort theories to hold America’s legal and heavily regulated gun industry responsible for urban crime.”
It didn’t work then, and it shouldn’t work now, Barr believes. He points to Mexico’s failure to stand up to the cartels. “Violence continued and the cartels tightened their grip on Mexican society,” he writes. “What better way to deflect blame than to claim that the American gun industry was responsible for the cartels’ success?”
This, it seems to us, is the real issue: The Mexican government is unable to protect its people, and it’s trying to set up the American gun manufacturing industry as the “proximate cause” fall guy.
My sense is that the Supreme Court isn’t buying it.
