BLUF
\nMexico\u2019s attempt to sway U.S. courts with an opinion from IACHR runs into the problems that, unfortunately, have plagued Mexico. NSSF is sympathetic to the victims in Mexico who have suffered under the criminal violence wrought by narco-terrorist drug cartels. However, until Mexico addresses corruption and crime on their side of the border, this won\u2019t be resolved.
\nThe problem isn\u2019t from U.S. firearm manufacturers or retailers<\/p>\n
Mexico Tries to Use International Courts to Attack American Gun Makers and It Doesn\u2019t Go Well.<\/a><\/p>\n Mexico\u2019s hope to appropriate a human rights court to bolster its chances in frivolous lawsuits against U.S. firearm manufacturers and retailers is disappearing like a vapor in breeze.<\/p>\n The Inter-American Court of Human Rights published an\u00a0advisory opinion<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0at the request of Mexico\u2019s government. NSSF filed an amicus brief with the IACHR arguing that Mexico was attempting to improperly influence sovereign U.S. courts by co-opting an international human rights court that has no jurisdiction on pending decisions. Predictably, the IACHR leaned into the opinion anyway.<\/p>\n But if this was the boost for which Mexico was searching in its pending lawsuits, authorities there will be disappointed. They got platform shoes, not a platform with which they can walk in when they press their claims.<\/p>\n There are a couple reasons for that. First, U.S. courts are sovereign. Courts in the United States answer to the U.S. Constitution, from which all U.S. law stems. Second, the U.S. Supreme Court already dismissed one of their flagship and erroneous claims that U.S. firearm manufacturers are somehow responsible for the criminal violence and harms caused by narco-terrorists in Mexico. Lastly, there are growing and continuing reports of widespread corruption and arms smuggling within Mexico.<\/p>\n The IACHR wrote in its opinion that companies have an obligation to supervise distribution of firearms to avoid \u201chuman rights violations,\u201d but it didn\u2019t name specific companies. In fact, it didn\u2019t list U.S. firearm manufacturers at all. The IACHR also held that governments must guarantee effective judicial remedies for violations of human rights but, despite Mexico\u2019s demand that the IACHR reject laws like the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, the IACHR did not even criticize, much less reject, these sensible procedural protections for the firearms industry.<\/p>\n The most egregious portion of the opinion noted that the IACHR takes pains to observe that human rights obligations are \u201ctransnational.\u201d That means that companies in one country should be responsible for human rights violations that occur further down the chain. That can\u2019t be interpreted as anything other than a swipe at U.S. companies. \u00a0However, here again, no companies are named.<\/p>\n The IACHR\u2019s opinion will obviously have no bearing on the U.S. Supreme Court\u2019s decision in\u00a0Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., et al. v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos<\/em>. In that case the Court held that the PLCAA bars Mexico\u2019s claims that firearm manufacturers \u201caided and abetted\u201d illegal firearms trafficking to narco-terrorist drug cartels in Mexico. NSSF\u00a0filed an amicus brief<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0supporting U.S. firearm manufacturers in that case. The Supreme Court rejected Mexico\u2019s theory of liability in a 9-0 decision written by Justice Elena Kagan. It explained that the lawsuit is barred by the PLCAA because \u201cMexico\u2019s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant gun manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers\u2019 unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Lawyers for Mexico\u00a0alleged<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that U.S. firearm manufacturers sold guns to \u201crogue gun dealers,\u201d \u201cdeclined to suitably regulate dealers\u2019 practices\u201d and firearm \u201cdesign and marketing choices\u201d spurred narco-terrorists to demand those illegally trafficked firearms.<\/p>\n Those theories were resoundingly rejected. The fact is that firearm manufacturing, distribution and sales are highly-regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Every firearm sold at retail is transferred only after a Form 4473 is completed and signed and the transferee approved through the FBI\u2019s National Instant Criminal Background Check System.<\/p>\n And the Supreme Court appears to have\u00a0already addressed this theory by the IACHR<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that companies are responsible for the alleged and even criminal misuse of their products to violate human rights. The Court, in its decision, explained that federal aiding-and-abetting law is premised on the centuries-old standard that a person is not responsible for a crime he did not personally commit unless he deliberately \u201chelps another to complete its commission.\u201d In other words, an aider and abettor must \u201cparticipate in\u201d the crime \u201cas something that he wishes to bring about\u201d and \u201cseek by his action to make it succeed.\u201d More recently, the Court explained in a case brought against social media companies that aiding and abetting claims do not meet this standard if a plaintiff alleges that a company has mere knowledge that \u201csome bad actors\u201d are taking \u201cadvantage\u201d of its products for criminal purposes.<\/p>\n Still, it is likely to be used in Mexico\u2019s\u00a0lawsuit against several firearm retailers<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0in Arizona. That case,\u00a0Estados Unidos Mexicanos v. Diamondback Shooting Sports, Inc.<\/em>, is pending. Mexico\u2019s President Claudia Sheinbaum, just days after the Supreme Court\u2019s rejection of Mexico\u2019s firearm manufacturers\u2019 lawsuit, said she\u2019s eyeing this case<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0to attempt to force gun control through judicial avenues. Mexico\u00a0alleges<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0in their complaint that the firearm retailers, \u201csystematically participate in trafficking military-style weapons and ammunition to drug cartels in Mexico by supplying gun traffickers.\u201d It further\u00a0argues<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that the firearm retailers \u201cknow or should know that their reckless and unlawful business practices \u2014 including straw sales, and bulk and repeat sales of military-style weapons \u2014 supply dangerous criminals in Mexico and the U.S.\u201d<\/p>\n None of this addresses the ongoing issues and concerns of rampant corruption by narco-terrorist cartels in Mexico\u2019s government. Just last week, it was\u00a0reported<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0that Cartel Jalisco New Generation illegally obtained firearms, tactical gear and body armor from Mexico\u2019s Navy. That revelation was revealed by a cartel hitman to authorities in April 2025 that he personally picked up firearms for the drug cartel.<\/p>\n These aren\u2019t passing allegations made by a disaffected and rival cartel. The informant is a protected witness of Mexico\u2019s Attorney General\u2019s Office. The information revealed that firearms and gear were often coming straight from Mexico\u2019s Navy warehouses.<\/p>\n There is\u00a0example<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0after\u00a0example<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0of the highest ranks of Mexico\u2019s government being tied closely with narco-terrorist drug cartels. Mexico\u2019s then-President Andr\u00e9s Manuel L\u00f3pez Obrador is credibly accused of\u00a0taking bribes<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0from narco-terrorist drug cartels for his own election and then using a soft approach toward the cartels. Mexican government corruption was embodied through President Obrador\u2019s \u201chugs, not bullets\u201d campaign. That effort was\u00a0labeled a failure<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0by the Council on Foreign Relations.<\/p>\n Mexico\u2019s current president, President Sheinbaum, is President Obrador\u2019s\u00a0hand-picked successor<\/a><\/strong>. Until Mexico\u2019s government takes its own systemic corruption seriously, there is little hope for Mexican citizens.<\/p>\n Critics pointing to the United States as the source for Mexico\u2019s scourge of narco-terrorist criminal violence do so with skewed data. David Hogg, gun control activist and booted co-vice chair of the Democratic National Committee (DNC),\u00a0blamed<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0\u201c90% of the guns used by the cartel\u2026\u201d on America. He didn\u2019t get the number from thin air. He got it from former\u00a0President Barack Obama<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0when he made the erroneous claim in 2009. However, that\u2019s cherry picking the data.<\/p>\n The data comes from a Government Accountability Office (GAO)\u00a0report that stated<\/a><\/strong>, \u201cit is impossible to know how many firearms are illegally smuggled into Mexico in a given year, [but] about 87 percent of firearms seized by Mexican authorities and traced in the last 5 years originated in the United States.\u201d<\/p>\n Seized<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0traced<\/em>\u00a0are the operative words here. Mexico doesn\u2019t submit every firearm it seizes for tracing and not all guns that are seized are traceable. And it does not trace firearms it knows it owned but were stolen from its armories.<\/p>\n The GAO Report recognized that \u201cthe eTrace data [used in the report] only represents data from gun trace requests submitted from seizures in Mexico and not all the guns seized,\u201d and \u201c[i]n 2008, of the almost 30,000 firearms that the Mexican Attorney General\u2019s office said were seized, only around 7,200, or approximately a quarter were submitted to ATF for tracing.\u201d<\/p>\n Of the 7,200 guns submitted for tracing, only about 4,000 could be traced by ATF. Of those 4,000 guns, some 3,480 (or 87 percent) were shown to have come from the United States. Those 3,480 guns equal less than half of the 7,000 firearms submitted by the Mexican government to the ATF for tracing, and less than 12 percent of the total firearms seized in Mexico in 2008.<\/p>\n That critical information actually flips the false narrative on its head. Almost 90 percent of the guns seized in Mexico in 2008 were not traced back to the United States.<\/p>\n Further, in April 2024, the ATF released Volume Three of the\u00a0National Firearms Commerce and Trafficking Assessment<\/a><\/strong>. The report focused specifically on 9,700 ATF firearm trafficking investigations over a five-year period between 2017 and 2021.<\/p>\n The ATF\u2019s own report<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0found just 136 cases of illegal firearm trafficking tied to a federal firearms licensee (FFL) over the five-year period \u2014 just 1.6 percent of all 9,700 cases. With 134,516 FFLs at the end of 2021, that equates to just 0.1 percent of all FFLs being implicated in allegedly illegal firearm trafficking.<\/p>\n Mexico\u2019s attempt to sway U.S. courts with an opinion from IACHR runs into the problems that, unfortunately, have plagued Mexico. NSSF is sympathetic to the victims in Mexico who have suffered under the criminal violence wrought by narco-terrorist drug cartels. However, until Mexico addresses corruption and crime on their side of the border, this won\u2019t be resolved.<\/p>\n The problem isn\u2019t from U.S. firearm manufacturers or retailers. Mexico must address rampant crime and corruption on their side of the border.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" BLUF Mexico\u2019s attempt to sway U.S. courts with an opinion from IACHR runs into the problems that, unfortunately, have plagued Mexico. NSSF is sympathetic to the victims in Mexico who have suffered under the criminal violence wrought by narco-terrorist drug cartels. However, until Mexico addresses corruption and crime on their side of the border, this … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-115639","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-enemies-foreign-domestic"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115639","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=115639"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115639\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":115642,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115639\/revisions\/115642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=115639"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=115639"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=115639"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What the IACHR Said<\/h5>\n
The 800-Pound Cartel in the Room<\/h5>\n
Data Doesn\u2019t Lie, but Gun Control Advocates Do<\/h5>\n