Supreme Court takes up gun-makers' bid to end lawsuit from Mexican government over cartel violence
Source: CBS News
Updated on: October 4, 2024 / 12:51 PM EDT
Washington — The Supreme Court on Friday said it will consider a bid by U.S. gun-makers to end a lawsuit from the Mexican government seeking to hold them liable for violence committed by drug cartels. The case involves some of the nation's biggest and most well-known gun companies, including Smith & Wesson, Beretta and Glock.
They are urging the Supreme Court to reverse a lower court ruling that allowed Mexico's lawsuit against them to proceed despite despite a 2005 law that broadly shields the firearms industry from liability. The case will be argued in the court's next term, which kicks off Monday. It is one of 13 new cases the justices added to the docket after meeting to consider a host of appeals earlier this week.
The court fight arose out of an August 2021 lawsuit that the Mexican government filed against seven U.S. gun manufacturers and one distributor that sought to hold them liable for the violence committed by drug cartels in the country. Mexico claimed gun dealers in the U.S. are the main source of guns used by the cartels, with as many as 597,000 of their firearms trafficked into Mexico every year. Nearly half of all guns recovered at Mexican crime scenes are made by the companies named in the suit, lawyers said.
The suit alleged that the gun industry is "aiding and abetting" the cartels by engaging in certain business practices even as they know that the cartels have been able to smuggle their firearms across the southern border. Firearms makers in the U.S., the Mexican government claimed, engaged in this conduct to profit off the criminal market for their weapons.
Read more: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/supreme-court-gun-makers-lawsuit-cartel-violence-mexican-government/
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