Why the Supreme Court has just given a big victory to firearms manufacturers, in Smith & Wesson c. Mexico

The Supreme Court made a unanimous opinion on Thursday which closes a lawsuit brought by the Nation of Mexico against American firearm societies.

In Smith & Wesson c. Estados Unidos MexicanosMexico continued seven manufacturers of American firearms, saying that their products are often sold to firearm traffickers who then provide these firearms to Mexican drug cartels. The Mexican government claims that Up to 90% of firearms recovered in crime scenes in Mexico comes from the United States.

Unfortunately for Mexico, however, a 2005 law known as the Protection of LaciL Trade in Arms Act (PLCAA) grants broad American immunity to prosecution aimed at maintaining them responsible for the damage “caused by the abusive use of firearms by third parties, including criminals”. PLCAA contains some exemptions to this general rule. As explained by judge Elena Kagan Smith and Wesson Opinion, a shooter can be held responsible for “helping and encouraging the offensive of someone else’s fire weapons”.

Mexico claims that the shooters have helped and encouraged illegal sales to the cartels by “supply (ING) of firearms to retail merchants which they know how to sell illegally to Mexican firearms”. Mexico also criticizes companies for having enabled bulk for firearms, which can allow illegal sales and practices such as the design of firearms that appeal to Mexican culture.

Such a pistol, for example, presents an image of the Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata, as well as a quote from Zapata: “It is better to die standing than to live on my knees.”

But Kagan’s opinion concluded that the simple fact that American firearms companies probably knew that some of their weapons were sold on the illegal market, even less than some of their weapons are designed to please the Mexicans, is not enough to overcome the PLCAA. As Kagan explains, this conclusion derives largely from the fairly recent decision of the Court in Twitter c. Taamneh (2023).

Twitter Preocious an attack by the Isis terrorist group who killed 39 people in a nightclub in Istanbul, including a man with American parents. These relatives have continued several social media companies in the American court, claiming that companies have helped and incurred the attack on Istanbul by allowing the Islamic State to publish content that promotes the ideology of the Islamic State and which is trying to recruit people to the cause of the terrorist organization.

But Twitter Warned against a legal regime where “ordinary merchants could become responsible for any abusive use of their goods and services, no matter how to attenuate their relationship with the criminal”. As a rule, someone who provides good or service to all arrivals is not legally responsible if a bad actor uses his product for mean purposes. If Ford sells a truck to a man who intentionally uses it to run and kill his wife, Ford will not normally be responsible for this homicide.

And so Kagan concludes that it is not enough for Mexico to show that the manufacturers of shooters could have taken additional measures to prevent their products from ending in the hands of drug cartels. Instead, “the merchant only becomes responsible if, beyond the supply of the good on the free market, he takes measures to” promote “the resulting crime and” make it “.” »»

Of course, something that distinguishes Smith and Wesson Since Twitter is that social media platforms are not weapons whose whole goal is to injure people. If Plcaa did not exist, Mexico could have argued that the decision of firearms companies to take and sell an intrinsically dangerous product should make them responsible for the consequences of the sale of such a product.

But, of course, the PLCAA exists. As Kagan writes, “Congress promulgated the status to interrupt a burst of prosecution by trying to pay down the downstream damages resulting from improper use of their products.” This can be a bad choice on the part of the congress. But, in the absence of a constitutional violation, it is not the work of the Congress decision to plan to define national policy.