Mexico has a cartel problem. They’ve had years to address it and rather than do much of anything, they just want to blame the United States for it. When Trump threatened to designate the cartels as terrorist organizations, Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum lashed out, threatening to amend her nation’s current lawsuit against gun manufacturers to suggest they’re actively involved in arming the cartels.
That threat probably isn’t going to work out well for her considering how the Supreme Court sounded earlier this week.
Yet the truth of the matter, and why the lawsuit is stupid, is that gun manufacturers aren’t the problem. The problem is people who buy guns illegally, then smuggle them across the border for illegal sales on the other side.
People like this.
Authorities in Juarez, Mexico, say they have expelled an American they allege was one of the “largest provider of illegal firearms” to drug cartels in the border state of Chihuahua.
Chihuahua state police officers and the Mexican army arrested Roland Albert Muñoz, 41, on a highway west of Chihuahua City on Tuesday morning after receiving information from U.S. authorities that he was wanted on gun-running charges in Texas.
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The Attorney General’s Office said Muñoz, 41, is a native of Dallas, Texas, and a U.S. citizen although he carried a Mexican voter ID card. Chihuahua authorities also allege he sold guns used in the assassination attempt of a former Mexico City police chief in 2020 and in the murders of a Mexican immigration agent and two state police officers in 2022.
It also seems that Muñoz, an American citizen, had a voter ID card for Mexico. How he managed that is a mystery, though not a difficult one to solve. It’s not like Mexico doesn’t have a long and storied history of corruption.
See, the issue with Mexico’s lawsuit is that they’re blaming companies that have little to nothing to do with the end buyer. They’re wanting to bankrupt an industry that isn’t at fault for anything at all.
It’s an old tactic, which is why the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was passed in the first place. Anti-gun voices lament that the gun industry has protections no other industry has, but the truth is that most other industries don’t need such protections. No one blames Toyota for drunk driving. No one sues Kershaw because someone they care about got stabbed.
If they did, Congress would probably act to stop it sooner or later as well.
Muñoz is an alleged example of the real problem. People are obtaining guns through illegal means, often straw purchases but I’m willing to bet stolen guns are involved too, and then taking them where there’s a market for them.
But let’s also be real here. These are drug cartels. They’re getting stuff that’s banned pretty much everywhere on the planet and that doesn’t have a legitimate use for military, law enforcement, or anything else. If they can get that, they’re going to get guns.
The issue isn’t the source of the guns but the source of the demand for guns.
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