Designating Cartels Terrorists Isn’t ‘Worrisome’ To U.S. Gunmakers

President Donald Trump’s State Department has officially designated several murderous drug cartels, including Tren de Aragua and MS-13, as foreign terrorist organizations. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Juan Pablo Spinetto labeled that decision “worrying” while attempting to argue against the president’s move.

Never mind the thousands of lives lost every year to drug cartel violence in both Mexico and the United States. Pay no attention to the more than 250,000 American deaths since 2018 from illegal drug use by fentanyl smuggled into the United States from Mexico across a virtually open Biden-era border. Disregard that after four years of woeful inaction by an American president barely at the steering wheel, the new Trump administration is following through with the campaign promises he made to the American people to protect them from such violence. Spinetto has other concerns.

While describing to readers why, in his determination, President Trump’s move forward to label Mexican narco-terrorist drug cartels as international terrorist organizations would be “worrisome,” Spinetto takes an uninformed and bogus potshot at the lawful and highly-regulated U.S. firearm industry.

“The proposal to treat cartels as terrorists … adds significant collateral risks: Anyone who has contacts with narcos, knowingly or not, could be accused of collaborating with terrorists, from avocado producers in Michoacán that pay to stay alive to the US gun industry that has been selling arms to criminals,” Spinetto writes. The assertion that U.S. firearm manufacturers “sell arms to criminals” is a flat-out lie.

Mexico, of course, has no Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms for its citizens and the one and only firearm retailer in the country is in the heart of Mexico City, located on a military base. Firearms legally exported from the United States to the Mexican military have gone through rigorous and thorough end-to-end security checks, attempting to ensure that American-made guns do not fall into the hands of anyone else, especially the cartels.

After all, there are documented reports of Mexican soldiers defecting to work for narco-terrorist drug cartels, bringing with them over 150,000 firearms stolen from Mexican armories. Virtually all of the firearms used by the Mexican drug cartels, on the other hand, are illicitly possessed illegal arms unlawfully smuggled into Mexico by a network of drug cartels, through theft or straight-up government corruption. These facts are well known. Spinetto knows all of this too, of course, but the facts are inconvenient for his argument.

President Trump campaigned on ending the violence and crime coming from Mexico, whether it be smuggled drugs or criminal gang violence. Trump won in a landslide on Election Day, and he is carrying through on those promises. Formally declaring the murderous drug cartels in Mexico as foreign terrorist organizations gives him more tools to bring a stop to the violence.

President Trump’s Executive Order where he originally proposed the designation made it clear where he stands.

“The Mexican drug trafficking organizations have an intolerable alliance with the government of Mexico. The government of Mexico has afforded safe havens 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. This alliance endangers the national security of the United States, and we must eradicate the influence of these dangerous cartels,” the White House Fact Sheet states.

Mexico’s previous president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, did little to address his country’s violence, pursuing instead his “hugs, not bullets” approach that treated the cartels with kid gloves, a policy instituted after he reportedly took campaign contributions from drug cartels. He also oversaw the filing of a frivolous $10 billion lawsuit by the Mexican government, working in tandem with U.S.-based gun control activists, to sue law-abiding U.S. firearm manufacturers.

President Claudia Sheinbaum doesn’t seem to be changing any strategies and is laughably making new threats against President Trump and the U.S. firearm industry should he continue carrying out his promises. Following Spinetto’s lead, she had the audacity to threaten to expand Mexico’s lawfare against U.S. firearm manufacturers to claim the industry was giving material aid to foreign terrorists. That’s rich coming from the government that provides “safe haven” to her country’s narco-terrorists.

The facts are clear. It is not the U.S. firearm industry that is aiding Mexico’s narco-terrorist cartels and allowing them to commit heinous acts of violence upon the Mexican people. Firearm manufacturers in the United States are strictly regulated by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). Even during the Biden administration, with all the other attacks against the firearm industry, there was never a hint, nor allegation, of transnational arms smuggling by U.S. firearm manufacturers.

The lawsuit by Mexico against U.S. firearm manufacturers is a distraction, and I am confident it will be thrown out by the U.S. Supreme Court. Lawful U.S. firearm manufacturers are not responsible for Mexican crime and violence. For those answers, Mexico must answer to their own government corruption by cartel influence.

In the unlikely event Mexico’s case is not dismissed, President Sheinbaum would do well to remember that discovery in civil litigation in America goes both ways. President Trump is responsible for the safety and security of the American people. His strong actions to move forward in combating Mexican drug cartels are proof he’s taking that responsibility seriously and the American people support him doing so.

Lawrence G. Keane is a senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry trade association.