Quartermasters of the cartels - US gun manufacturers. Mexico takes aim at US gun manufacturers before the Supreme Court
Amid escalating tensions with its northern neighbor over immigration, drug smuggling, tariffs and other matters, Mexico is about to appear in the U.S. Supreme Court to defend a lower-court ruling allowing a major lawsuit against members of the U.S. gun industry to proceed.
Mexico sued seven firearms manufacturers and one wholesaler in 2021, alleging that they deliberately market and sell guns that make their way to drug cartels, fueling an epidemic of violence.
"Mexico has one gun store in the country and has extremely tough gun laws," says Jonathan E. Lowy, the president of Global Action on Gun Violence, a Washington legal and advocacy group that is helping represent Mexico. "Yet it has one of the worst gun violence problems in the world. That is almost entirely the result of the U.S. gun industry, which contributes to the illegal trafficking of hundreds of thousands of guns into Mexico every year."
In the 2021 civil lawsuit, Mexico claimed that nearly half of all firearms recovered at Mexican crime scenes are made by the seven U.S. firearms manufacturers named among the defendants. The suit is a common-law action seeking some $10 billion in damages and various forms of injunctive relief. It has two significant claims: The defendants "aided and abetted" unlawful firearms sales to gun traffickers, and those sales were a "proximate cause" of Mexico's harm. The suit says the defendants supply dealers known to disproportionately sell guns that end up in Mexico and in the hands of the cartels.
https://www.abajournal.com/web/article/mexico-alleges-in-supreme-court-case-that-u.s-gun-manufacturers-are-arming-violent-drug-cartels