American Gun Companies on Trial? Supreme Court Takes Up Mexican Government Lawsuit

In my prior life in the medical manufacturing industry, two-thirds of which was spent as an independent consultant, I was known as an expert in Corrective and Preventive Actions (CAPA). CAPA is a defined method for solving problems; the steps in the process are, broadly speaking, identifying the problem, defining the scope of the problem, conducting root cause analysis, developing corrections, corrective actions, and preventive actions, and then validating that the actions have resolved the root cause.

In twenty-plus years of teaching CAPA to some pretty high-powered organizations, one ironclad rule of root cause analysis has always applied: The tool is never the cause. But many companies fell into this trap — and in the political world, gun-control advocates have done likewise. And so has the government of Mexico, in filing a lawsuit seeking to blame American gun companies for Mexico's organized crime problems. Now the United States Supreme Court is taking a look at Mexico's lawsuit, and will hopefully deep-six it.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to hear a bid by U.S. gun maker Smith & Wesson (SWBI.O) and firearms wholesaler Interstate Arms to throw out Mexico's lawsuit accusing them of aiding the illegal trafficking of firearms to Mexican drug cartels.
The justices took up an appeal by the two companies of a lower court's refusal to dismiss Mexico's suit, which was filed in federal court in Boston in 2021, under a 2005 U.S. law that broadly shields gun companies from liability for crimes committed with their products.
The Supreme Court is due to hear the case during its nine-month term that begins on Monday.

The 2005 U.S. law cited here is 15 USC 105, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which has as its primary purpose:

To prohibit causes of action against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms or ammunition products, and their trade associations, for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.

The Act was in response to several lawsuits against American gun companies over the criminal misuse of their legal products, which is precisely as nonsensical as suing General Motors over the deaths of people due to drunk drivers.

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It's not a huge stretch to note that the government of Mexico is using this as a distraction from its manifest failure to maintain order in its own country.

Up to two thirds of intentional homicides in Mexico in recent years have borne signs of organized crime, including the use of high-powered weapons, multiple victims, evidence of torture and messages linked to specific criminal groups, according to a 2021 report by the University of San Diego.

Mexico is, sadly, a failed state. While the U.S. Supreme Court is right to take up the challenge to this suit and, hopefully, will toss it out, Mexico's problems aren't so easily addressed. This is a country with gun-control laws that would send shivers up the legs of the most ardent American gun-grabbers, and yet their rate of crimes committed with firearms is out of control; their country is dominated by criminal cartels, and even if one could wave a magic wand and dry up every American-made firearm in Mexico, it would be a matter of days before the cartels started manufacturing their own, assuming they are not already doing so. Even modern firearms are not terribly complicated pieces of equipment, and any machine shop could easily turn out large numbers of something like a small submachine gun.

Mexico, like American gun grabbers, is cynically trying to distract from its failures by blaming the sword for the hand that wields it. This lawsuit will likely fail, and Mexico's problems will still be unresolved.