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Mexico obtains US court authorization to sue firearms companies
Mexico has taken the US firearms industry to court to hold them responsible for the violence committed by cartels using their weapons on its soil.
At the Nogales land border crossing signs warn that firearms and ammunition are prohibited once you cross the border into Mexico. Arizona, US, in April 2017.
For the past three years, Mexico has been taking the American firearms industry to court in the US. Recent legal victories have been widely celebrated in the country. For the first time, the American justice system has authorized a country to sue this sector for its role in firearms trafficking, and to demand reparations.
The issue is one of the most sensitive in Mexican public opinion, given that the American firearms industry bears a large share of the responsibility for drug trafficking, the main scourge of the country. Mexico City has estimated that nearly half a million weapons from the US enter the country illegally every year. 6 out of 10 murders are committed with firearms, almost all of which come from the country’s northern neighbor.
There has also been considerable interest in this legal battle, which has been underway since 2021, in the US. Mexico’s victories in the federal courts of Boston (Massachusetts) and Tucson (Arizona), which have been described as “historic,” have been applauded by a majority of Americans; who want to see regulation imposed on this industry, which has been implicated in both civilian massacres and the fentanyl crisis.
“The US now knows that it is arming the cartels that are flooding the country with one of the most lethal drugs,” said Jonathan Lowy, the American lawyer who has been representing Mexico in this litigation and has been battling this industry in the courts for the past 27 years.
‘Attractive marketing strategies’
The Mexican foreign ministry has implemented a legal and political strategy to get the industry to change its practices. Mexico has argued that the US firearms industry has set up “deliberate efforts to create and maintain an illegal market for their weapons in Mexico.” It cites weapons designed as “military-style,” that can easily be converted to allow for automatic fire; and whose design imitates symbols of Mexican “narco” culture figures and Mexican national symbols, such as its flag or the Virgin of Guadalupe.
For example, Colt’s, which is one of nine manufacturers targeted by the Mexican complaint, produces three models – El Jefe, El Grito and Emiliano Zapata – of its Colt .38 revolver featuring grips engraved with these symbols as well as a phrase attributed to the Mexican revolutionary figure Zapata: “It’s better to die on your feet than to live on your knees.” Firearms manufacturing company Barrett, meanwhile, has designed .50-caliber rifles capable of pulverizing vehicle armor, and which have already shot down Mexican army helicopters south of the Rio Bravo.
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