Mexican President Threatens Double-Down Lawfare to Cover for Cartels
Mexico has revealed there are no limits to the depths to which it will sink to threaten America’s law-abiding firearm industry and the Second Amendment. Mexico’s government continues to run interference for the narco-terrorist drug cartels that are fueling rampant murder and corruption in their own country. It is also a damning indictment on the nascent Mexican presidency’s entanglement with drug kingpins.
Mexico’s lawyers – supported by American gun control activist and lawyer Jonathan Lowy – will appear before the U.S. Supreme Court on March 4 to argue that their frivolous lawsuit should be allowed to proceed. That case – Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., et al., v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos – was petitioned to SCOTUS by the industry members who are being sued by Mexico. Mexico contends that U.S. firearm manufacturers are legally responsible for $10 billion in damages to compensate Mexico for costs it incurs when Mexican narco-terrorists illegally smuggle firearms into Mexico and criminally misuse them on their side of the border. Mexico is also asking a U.S. court to issue an injunction dictating how and which firearms Americans may purchase when exercising their Second Amendment rights in America. NSSF’s amicus brief filed in the case argues that Mexico’s lawsuit is prohibited by the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) and lacks legal merit.
President Donald Trump, in announcing his executive order imposing a tariff on Mexican imports, said, “Mexican drug trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico. The government of Mexico has afforded safe haven for the cartels to engage in the manufacturing and transportation of dangerous narcotics, which collectively have led to the overdose deaths of hundreds of thousands of American victims.” President Trump issued an Executive Order the day he took office to kick start the process of designating the cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.
This week, President Trump followed up that process with Secretary of State Marco Rubio officially declaring Tren de Aragua, MS-13, the Sinaloa Cartel, the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, the United Cartels, the Gulf Cartel, the Northeast Cartel and the Michoacán Family as foreign terrorist organizations.
None of this is sitting well with Mexican President Sheinbaum.
Last week, at a press conference, she threatened that, “If they declare these criminal groups as terrorists, then we’ll have to expand our U.S. lawsuit,” to claim that U.S. firearm manufacturers are complicit in aiding and supporting the narco-terrorist drug cartels.
Courting Drug Cartels
“We categorically reject the slander made by the White House against the Mexican government about alliances with criminal organizations,” the Mexican president wrote on social media at the time, according to CBS News report.
While President Sheinbaum dismisses President Trump’s claim, she just hosted former Mexican Secretary of Defense Salvador Cienfuegos on stage for a ceremony just a week ago. Cienfuegos, known as the “Godfather” to drug cartels, was the most-senior Mexican government official to be arrested by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) for drug trafficking, which is hand-in-glove with the illegal smuggling of firearms into Mexico.
“If there is such an alliance anywhere, it is in the U.S. gun shops that sell high-powered weapons to these criminal groups,” she added.
To be sure, Mexico already has another pending case against several Arizona-based firearm retailers, Estados Unidos Mexicanos v. Diamondback Shooting Sports Inc. et al. Mexico alleges that several firearm retailers are complicit with the illegal straw purchases of firearms that were criminally smuggled across the international border.
Evidence Proves Otherwise
Here is the problem with Mexico’s claims. They cannot prove U.S. firearm manufacturers or the retailers are, in any way, responsible. The firearms were legally manufactured and sold in accordance with U.S. laws. That includes an FBI National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) verification. The criminal action is by those individuals who lie to licensed retailers to illegally straw purchase a firearm for the cartel smugglers. They are committing crimes, not the manufacturer and not the retailer following the law. The irony is that the firearm industry has a partnership with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) called “Don’t Lie for the Other Guy™” to warn the public that buying a gun for someone who can’t is a federal crime that carries up to 15 years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
Not only can’t Mexico prove any validity to their frivolous claims, evidence of their own complicity is mountainous. A 2023 CBS Reports investigation discovered that there were dozens of narco-terrorist drug cartels paying Americans to illegally straw purchase firearms throughout the United States. Those firearms were funneled to Mexico, through networks that operate in the same manner as terrorist cells. Whistleblowers provided information to U.S. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) about the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ (ATF) Project Thor, which was successfully dismantling these networks until it was abruptly, and without explanation, halted.
Sen. Grassley demanded answers from then-ATF Director Steven Dettelbach. Director Dettelbach resigned his post without ever providing those answers.
President Sheinbaum is busy deflecting any responsibility her government has for its known relationships with narco-terrorist drug cartels. She made no mention of Cienfuegos’ presence – in his old military uniform – at a national ceremony where he stood just feet from her. Nor did she address allegations of her predecessor and protégé former Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is alleged to have raked in millions from Mexican drug kingpins even as he rolled out a soft-on-cartels “hugs, not bullets” policy. President Sheinbaum was the handpicked successor that López Obrador supported through recent Mexican elections.
Show The Rest
President Sheinbaum’s latest salvo to smear U.S. firearm manufacturers was to claim that the overwhelming majority of firearms recovered at Mexican crime scenes are coming from the United States. That was the same tale propelled by President Barack Obama, no friend to U.S. firearm manufacturers, in 2009. It wasn’t true then and it’s not true now.
Fox News reported in 2009, “What’s true, an ATF spokeswoman told FOXNews.com, in a clarification of the statistic used by her own agency’s assistant director, ‘is that over 90 percent of the traced firearms originate from the U.S.’”
The report continued, “But a large percentage of the guns recovered in Mexico do not get sent back to the U.S. for tracing, because it is obvious from their markings that they do not come from the U.S. ‘Not every weapon seized in Mexico has a serial number on it that would make it traceable, and the U.S. effort to trace weapons really only extends to weapons that have been in the U.S. market,’” Matt Allen, special agent of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), told Fox News. A 2012 report from NSSF debunked claims to show that only 12 percent of firearms criminally misused in Mexico were originally sold in the United States
Even the ATF’s own Firearm Trace Data report covering 2016-2021 came with a disclaimer. The report states, “Not all firearms used in crime are traced and not all firearms traced are used in crime.”
That’s something that Sen. Grassley recognized in 2012. Mexico is only submitting guns for ATF tracing that officials there know are from the United States. NSSF noted in 2022 that even properly-supplied firearms for Mexico’s military and police have a notorious habit of being found on the wrong side of the crime scene tape in Mexico. A report then noted that Mexico’s Army was losing 30 percent of their firearms that were legally purchased and exported from U.S. manufacturers.
None of this matters to Mexico that thinks blame-shifting lawfare in U.S. courts is a convenient tool to distract attention from its “intolerable alliance” with the narco- terrorists wreaking havoc in both the United States and Mexico.