The following editorial originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times:
Unlawful traffic across the southern U.S. border is not one-way, a fact driven home by a federal lawsuit filed this month by the Mexican government against a host of U.S. gun manufacturers and distributors. It’s a somewhat brazen — and welcome — move.
The U.S. is the indirect armament supplier for deadly drug wars in Mexico and the gangsters of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The American appetite for illicit narcotics draws drugs northward; the “iron river” of weapons flows south; Mexican and Central American society is torn apart by terror and murder; desperate refugees of gang violence come north. Traffic both ways is heavy. So is the death toll.
Mexico v. Smith and Wesson was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Defendants include Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock, Ruger, Smith & Wesson, and Interstate Arms.
Predictably, the small-arms industry responded to the suit with shock, derision and denial. From their reaction, you’d think Mexico had demanded something truly crazy, like, say, a border wall. In fact, a majority of guns in Mexico can be traced to U.S. distributors — which import and resell foreign-made weapons — and to U.S. manufacturers.
The sales are rarely direct, because gun ownership in Mexico, although not uncommon, is sharply restricted. The suit alleges that sales take place in the U.S. for illicit shipment to Mexico. The key allegation is that the gun makers not only know their weapons will end up south of the border but also create them specifically for that market. One often-cited example is a Colt .38 Super pistol engraved with a picture of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata.
Congress has failed to take action to stem the flow of death southward from the U.S. It hasn’t imposed background checks, blocked straw buyers from purchasing guns for traffickers or cracked down on makers of untraceable gun-assembly kits.
Americans responded to COVID-19 lockdowns last year by lining up at gun stores. Manufacturers, distributors and sellers did well. The murder rate jumped to the highest level seen in the U.S. in more than two decades.
So Mexico just may be on to something with its lawsuit.
Cigarette manufacturers and merchants knew what they were doing when they sold their highly addictive and cancer-causing products in the U.S. and around the world. Liability suits, calling for them to pay the costs of the damage and death their products caused, changed the industry’s practices and Americans’ habits, and drove down the number of deaths.
Gun makers claim to not be subject to the same kinds of pressures due to the Second Amendment, which protects the right to keep and bear arms.
Does it also protect against knowingly making and selling guns to be illegally trafficked across the border? Perhaps we’ll find out.
