FPC, NRA File Briefs With Supreme Court Over Mexico Lawsuit

The case involving Mexico’s lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers and retailers for violence south of the border is beginning to see some action from pro-gun rights organizations.

On Wednesday, both the Firearms Policy Coalition (FPC) and the National Rifle Association (NRA) filed briefs with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking a review of lower court decisions regarding Mexico’s attempts to impose its gun-control preferences on Americans.

“Mexico’s frivolous lawsuit to impose its draconian disarmament policies is a bald attempt to wage war on peaceable Americans and our constitutionally protected rights,” FPC President Brandon Combs said in a release announcing filing of the brief. “As our brief makes clear, the Supreme Court should enforce the law, put an end to this radical anti-rights lawfare and protect the right to keep and bear arms.”

“Mexico’s attempt in this litigation to impose a foreign nation’s policy preferences on the American people through judicial fiat and exact a financial penalty that would cripple the American firearms ecosystem would be deeply troubling even if it stood alone,” the FPC brief stated. “It does not. To the contrary, this action is merely one of a phalanx of recent, abusive lawsuits brought by anti-Second-Amendment activists, organizations and governments.”

In the end, the brief requested that the Supreme Court grant a review and intervene in the important case to protect gunmakers and the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA). In an earlier ruling, the First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the PLCAA does not bar Mexico’s lawsuit.

“The situation has accordingly become dire, and the time for this Court’s intervention is now,” the brief stated. “In the four-and-a-half years since this Court declined to review the Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision in Soto, the chief development has been the contrivance of ever more devious and extreme methods of evading the Act Congress passed to save the firearms community from abusive litigation. If the Court allows the lower-court’s treatment of the PLCAA to ‘percolate for another four-and-a-half years, there may be nothing left of the firearms marketplace to save.”

In the NRA brief, the organization stated: “Mexico has extinguished its constitutional arms right and now seeks to extinguish America’s. To that end, Mexico aims to destroy the American firearms industry financially.”

“This case exemplifies why PLCAA was enacted,” the brief continued. “Mexico seeks billions of dollars in damages and the imposition of extensive gun controls in America while relying on shoddy data and false allegations to exaggerate the impact of Petitioners’ firearms on Mexican homicides.”

The lawsuit is named Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos