The Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against U.S. gun manufacturers, alleging the companies aided in illegal gun sales to Mexican cartels.
Justice Elena Kagan wrote for the Court’s 9-0 decision, declaring that the “kinds of allegations Mexico makes cannot satisfy the demands of the statute’s predicate exception.”
“In asserting that the manufacturers intentionally supply guns to bad-apple dealers, Mexico never confronts that the manufacturers do not directly supply any dealers, bad-apple or otherwise,” she explained. “They instead sell firearms to middlemen distributors, whom Mexico has never claimed lack independence.”
“Mexico’s complaint … does not plausibly allege such aiding and abetting,” Kagan wrote. “So this suit remains subject to PLCAA’s general bar: An action cannot be brought against a manufacturer if, like Mexico’s, it is founded on a third party’s criminal use of the company’s product.”
Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Clarence Thomas issued separate concurring opinions.
Thomas wrote, “Allowing plaintiffs to proffer mere allegations of a predicate violation would force many defendants in [Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act] litigation to litigate their criminal guilt in a civil proceeding, without the full panoply of protections that we otherwise afford to criminal defendants,” while Jackson noted that the PLCAA “reflects Congress’s view that the democratic process, not litigation, should set the terms of gun control.”
Mexico’s 2021 lawsuit claimed that nearly all guns “recovered at crime scenes in Mexico — 70% to 90% of them — were trafficked from the U.S.” The lawsuit named Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock, Ruger, Barrett, and Interstate Arms.
