It always looked to me like Mexico’s lawsuit against the gun industry was, at best, nothing more than a case of politicians trying to shift the blame for their own failures. In this case, Mexico–a nation that looks more and more like a failed state each and every day–sought to blame gun companies for cartel violence they’ve done pretty much nothing to address.
The problem for them was the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prevents lawsuits against gun companies except when they actually break the law or in cases of liability.
Sure, they keep coming, especially after the Sandy Hook lawsuit against Remington settled a few years back, but the PLCAA requires a bit more than Mexico seemed to be providing.
Then again, this is the same Supreme Court that united on Rahimi. Could this be another case where justices crossed the line? Could the PLCAA’s days be numbered?
Arguments were made earlier today, and while I’m terrible at taking notes during something like an audio recording of a judicial proceedings, I did follow along with enough to get the gist of things.
I think the PLCAA will be just fine.
First, let’s touch on the hilarity that took place.
Did you know that some serial numbers can just be erased? That gun manufacturers actually build guns with serial numbers than can just be wiped out?
It seems at least one justice seems to believe they do. (I’m not sure if it was Sotomayor or Kagan, and neither is Moros)
Sotomayor/Kagan back to bashing scary guns that cartels like. Says they are making “erasable serial numbers” (huh?)
Asks MX what liability the distributors have, and if nothing, doesn’t that break the chain in proximate cause?
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) March 4, 2025
As for the second sentence, a lot of the discussion revolved around “proximate cause” which is basically an event that is sufficiently to an injury that it can be seen as the cause of that particular injury. In this case, did Smith & Wesson’s selling of guns amount to the proximate cause of the cartel’s actions in Mexico. This would require Smith & Wesson to foresee the potential ramification of their actions. In other words, they would have had to know that what they were doing could well result in the cartels getting guns as the result of their actions.
In this case, considering that Smith & Wesson doesn’t actually sell to individuals or even gun stores all that much and there are no examples provided of them selling directly to anyone they had any reason to suspect was providing them to the cartels, which creates a problem.
MX counsel now rattling off allegations in complaint and say they are enough to survive a motion to dismiss.
But even Jackson sounds exasperated at that, says they do not allege enough in terms of violations by manufacturers.
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) March 4, 2025
One justice asks if the complaint alleges sales to specific bad dealers.
MX says yes, reads off of their complaint, but does not name specific dealers in that excerpt.
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) March 4, 2025
Justice Amy Coney Barret notes that they don’t provide specific dealers.
However, this is probably the most telling bit there:
Jackson says PLCAA is also about congress asserting its authority to regulate guns and not be circumvented by lawsuits and the judicial branch.
Says that without the clarity of manufacturers violating a specific state or federal law, they are going against spirit of PLCAA.…
— Kostas Moros (@MorosKostas) March 4, 2025
That’s right, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson actually sat there and spoke in defense of the PLCAA.
While it’s clear that most of the anti-gun justices are, in fact, anti-gun, there didn’t seem to be a whole lot of support there for Mexico and their efforts to penalize American gun manufacturers for things that were quite frankly beyond their control.
The justices had to be instructed on how the gun industry works, namely that the manufacturers tend to sell to distributors, who then sell to licensed dealers. There are multiple layers between a company like Smith & Wesson and the eventual buyer of the firearm, so much so that there’s little chance they could prevent a straw purchase even if they had the most profound desire to do everything humanly possible to do so.
While it’ll be a while before we get a final decision on this one, my hope is that Mexico isn’t basing its next budget on a financial windfall from the gun industry.
If so, their deficit will end up looking worse than ours does.
Read the full article here
