A person rests before the United States Supreme Court on June 5 in Washington, DC
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A unanimous supreme courtyard rejected Mexico’s assertion according to which manufacturers of American firearms Helped and encouraged the United States weapons pipeline to Mexican drug cartels.
“The complaint of Mexico was not plausibly going that the manufacturers of defendant firearms helped and encouraged the illegal sales of the Firemates of Mexican traffickers,” said Judge Elena Kagan, one of the three Liberals of the Tribunal.
The question was the assertion of Mexico according to which Smith & Wesson and other manufacturers of shooters closed eyes on hundreds of thousands of high power weapons made in the United States which are treated illegally in the hands of Mexican cartels.
Mexico has argued that it is a country where weapons are supposed to be difficult to obtain. There is only one store throughout the country where firearms can be bought legally, but the nation is flooded illegal cannons sold most often to cartels. Mexico argues that the gushing pipeline of what it calls “criminal cannons” comes from the United States where manufacturers know which concessionaires are the bad players.
“You cannot hide behind the intermediary and pretend as if you did not know what’s going on,” said Jonathan Lowy, Coconsil du Mexico and president of Global Action on Gun Violence, at NPR earlier this year.
But the firearms industry found this imperfect argument.
Lawrence Keane, lawyer for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the professional association of the firearms industry, told NPR earlier this year that each sale to a consumer by an authorized retailer is approved by the federal government, and each transaction requires a compulsory history verification.
Mexico argues that a “legal distribution system approved under federal law … helps and encourage cartels,” said Keane. “If that were all that was necessary, Budweiser would be responsible for driving accidents in a state of drunkenness in the United States, and apparently including Mexico.”
In the end, a unanimous supreme court accepted.
