Mexico ‘Seeks to Extinguish’ US Second Amendment in Bizarre Supreme Court Battle

Mexico has a problem with violence from cartels, even to the extent that they are arguably a narco state, but its leadership has decided to cast the blame on American gun makers instead of dealing with its own issues.

The Supreme Court is slated to hear a lawsuit on Tuesday in which the Latin American nation indeed plans to blame companies like Smith & Wesson for its consistent difficulties with running a functional country, according to The New York Times. The lawsuit, brought originally in 2021, was thrown out by a lower court judge in 2022, but a panel of judges of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Boston, Massachusetts, overturned that decision — unanimously — in 2024.

Mexico is demanding $10 billion in damages from American firearm manufacturers, claiming that those firms are complicit in arming the cartels.

But Second Amendment organizations in the United States do not buy that argument, especially given the fact that civilian ownership of firearms is incredibly regulated and virtually illegal in Mexico.

The National Rifle Association said in one amicus brief, “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,” the group added.

“Mexico seeks to bankrupt the American firearms industry by holding lawful firearms manufacturers liable for violence committed by Mexican drug cartels in Mexico — despite alleging no affirmative misconduct by the manufacturers, intent of the manufacturers to facilitate the violence, or concrete nexus between the manufacturers and the cartels. If Mexico can overcome a motion to dismiss on such a weak foundation, the proliferation of meritless Mexico-style cases could destroy the firearms industry solely through litigation costs,” the brief explained.

The National Association for Gun Rights likewise wrote a brief singling out the hypocrisy of the Mexican government, noting that Mexico “does not this tradition of respect for the individual right to keep and bear arms.”

“These strict gun control measures have not stopped a surge of violence, often linked to organized criminal activity associated with the drug trade in Mexico,” the group said.

“Rather than addressing the root causes of this violence at home, Mexico seeks to cast blame elsewhere,” the brief continued.

“Instead of addressing public corruption or cracking down on the cartels and organized crime in Mexico, Mexico brought this action seeking to hold American arms manufacturers accountable for its own domestic policy failures.”

This absurd case, which has been moving through the court system for a few years now, has been ramped up due to the strained relationship between Mexico and the United States since President Donald Trump took office in January.

Trump declared Mexican cartels to be terrorist organizations, prompting a response from Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.

“If they declare these criminal groups as terrorists, then we’ll have to expand our U.S. lawsuit,” she said, per the Times.

Since Trump’s second inauguration, there have been the “ay carambas” and “que lastimas” from below the Rio Grande over the threat of tariffs and the renaming of the Gulf of America, but those are only the most recent manifestations of our differences with that country.

When the lawsuit from Mexico was first filed in 2021, now-former President Joe Biden was just settling into the Oval Office, ready to unleash the massive unforced error of an open border on our own nation.

That meant the problems of Mexico and the rest of Latin America also became the problems of the United States to a greater degree than ever before, with astronomically higher levels of human trafficking, drug smuggling, and migration impacting our way of life and the safety of our people on countless fronts.

These problems were not endemic to our country. They were endemic to Mexico.

The only reason we face them now is because our previously leadership’s disastrous policies.

Beyond the clear folly of a foreign country having standing to sue American companies, which provide basic tools of self-defense to law-abiding people who simply want to protect themselves and their families, the past four years of chaos have only added insult to injury.

If anything, we should be suing Mexico.

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