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Bullet cases can be seen on the floor of a crime scene after the State Security Minister of Mexico City, Omar García Harfuch, was wounded in an attack on June 26, 2020 in Mexico City. Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images Hide caption
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Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images
Bullets can be seen on the floor of a crime scene after the State Security Minister of Mexico City, Omar García Harfuch, was wounded in an attack in Mexico City on June 26, 2020.
Pedro Pardo / AFP via Getty Images
MEXICO CITY – On the morning of the 26th, they carried three Barrett .50 sniper rifles, a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol and carbine, a 5.56mm Ruger rifle, and a carbine of the Colt caliber 5.56 mm. After a terrible shooting, two police officers and a civilian were killed, the police chief was wounded and a drug cartel once again showed that it is armed like special forces.
The incident is the subject of an unprecedented lawsuit by the Mexican government to increase responsibility for gun violence. On Wednesday, the Mexican government sued American gun manufacturers and dealers in federal court for damage from illegal firearms. The defendants include Smith & Wesson, Barrett, Ruger, Colt, and several others.
The lawsuit aims to “get the defendant companies to indemnify the Mexican government for the damage caused by their negligent practices,” said Secretary of State Marcelo Ebrard, who brought the lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court. The Mexican government estimates economic losses of $ 10 billion.
The companies have not made any public statements. But a trade association for the US arms industry, the National Shooting Sport Foundation, denied the allegations.
The lawsuit has come a long way in American courts, legal experts say. But for Mexico, it’s about more than the courtroom.
“The Mexican government wants to put the arms trade at the center of talks with the US,” says Cecilia Farfán-Méndez, director of security research programs at the Center for US-Mexico Studies at the University of California in San Diego. “They say, ‘You are concerned about the drug trade, we are just as concerned about the gun trade.'”
Mexico has strict gun laws but is full of guns
US-made M4A1 rifles with grenade launchers, part of an arsenal confiscated from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Mexico City in 2012. Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images Hide caption
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Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images
US-made M4A1 rifles with grenade launchers, part of an arsenal confiscated from the Jalisco New Generation Cartel in Mexico City in 2012.
Yuri Cortez / AFP via Getty Images
In Mexico, it is nearly impossible for citizens to legally buy a gun. One arms shop is owned by the military and, according to the government, issues fewer than 50 permits a year. But that hasn’t stopped millions of firearms from circulating across the country. According to the US government, an estimated 200,000 firearms are illegally imported from the US each year. Between 70 and 90% of the firearms found at crime scenes in Mexico are from the United States. In 2020, there were 24,617 homicides involving a firearm in Mexico.
“All border security is aimed at preventing drugs from entering the US, not at identifying weapons going south,” says Carlos Pérez Ricart, professor of international relations at the Center for Economic Research and Education in Mexico City. “A single cell of three or four people can smuggle between 300 and 400 weapons into Mexico every year, no problem.”
Manufacturers should “attract and arm” cartels
The lawsuit alleges that not only are the gun companies negligent, but that they “design, market, distribute and sell guns in a manner that they know they routinely arm the drug cartels in Mexico”.
The suit gives a striking example: Colt’s caliber .38 “Emiliano Zapata 1911”. A Zapata quote is engraved on the gold-plated pistol: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.” According to local media reports, the weapon is coveted by cartel bosses. It was the weapon with which the Mexican investigative journalist Miroslava Breach was murdered in 2017. The lawsuit provides several other examples of manufacturers allegedly tailoring products based on cartel preferences.
The National Shooting Sports Foundation described all allegations as “baseless”.
“The Mexican government is responsible for the rampant crime and corruption within its own borders,” said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the foundation. “It is these cartels that are illegally imported into Mexico or that criminally abuse firearms stolen from the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies. Instead of trying to scapegoat law-abiding American corporations, the Mexican authorities must focus their efforts on bringing the cartels to justice . ”
The Mexican lawsuit cites dozens of media reports, academic investigations and government documents alleging that the companies are selling guns because they know they will get into cartel hands.
“Gun companies know a significant percentage of their products get into the hands of cartels,” Ioan Grillo, author of Blood Gun Money: How America Arms Gangs and Cartels, told NPR. (He is one of the sources cited in the government complaint.) “And the way the products are arriving in certain places, I think they see a market and know that cartels are an integral part of that market are.”
Grillo says gun sales in border states such as Texas, New Mexico and Arizona reflect the cartel’s demand for their preferred weapons, such as the AK-47-style guns sold by the defendant Century Arms and Barrett’s .50-caliber sniper rifle .
The suit is a long shot
Gun manufacturers will almost certainly petition for dismissal, according to legal experts, but the Mexican government is hoping the allegations will be taken seriously by a judge.
“It seems like a stronger case than meets the eye,” says Carl Tobias, law professor at the University of Richmond. The Mexican government “would argue that the case should not be dismissed because of the information it needs to prove” [allegations like this] is in the hands of the manufacturers and they should be able to view documents, they should be able to drop off the relevant players. “
It’s an uphill battle. The first hurdle to overcome is a 2005 law in the United States, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It makes civil lawsuits against arms manufacturers, such as those filed by the Mexican government, almost impossible.
But Tobias says the Mexican government has argued that the arms trade law should not apply due to previous Supreme Court rulings related to tort law overseas.
In addition, arms maker Remington – not named in the Mexican lawsuit – recently offered to settle with family members of the Sandy Hook massacre in a lawsuit alleging that its marketing practices contributed to the massacre. This development is encouraging for the Mexican government.
Mexico is resetting cooperation in the drug war
But even if the lawsuit fails, it has a different goal.
“That neutralizes the US argument for the drug war, it gives the Mexican government room to negotiate with the US,” says Pérez Ricart.
For example, when US officials complain that the Drug Enforcement Administration does not have enough room to work in Mexico, the Mexican government now responds with complaints about arms trafficking.
In July, the Mexican government announced that it had concluded the Mérida initiative, the US-Mexico drug war security agreement of 2008, and that it wanted to open up new avenues for cooperation. The US government could even welcome all of these developments, says Farfán-Méndez of UC San Diego.
“I do not think so [the U.S. government] would interpret the lawsuit as a hostile maneuver or something, “she says.” You might even be happy if it goes to court somewhere because it’s a way of dealing with the issue. “
With President Biden announcing that he will reintroduce the ban on assault weapons and implement other gun control measures, the governments of the United States and Mexico may have common priorities in firearms legislation.
The Mexican government is also a customer
But Mexico’s new focus on arms trafficking has a huge contradiction, says Pérez Ricart.
“The Mexican government is suing these companies on the one hand, and buying weapons from the same companies on the other hand and distributing them to the military and police,” he says.
National safeguards make the extent of Mexican military purchases difficult to calculate, but Defendants Colt, Glock and Barrett have sold all weapons to the Mexican armed forces for the past decade.
The Mexican security forces – including police at all levels and the military – are also guilty of the atrocities committed with firearms.
A lack of oversight means that an unknown number of these legally bought weapons also end up on the black market. In the past two years, 341 long guns and 1,075 pistols have been reported “missing” by the police and military in Mexico, but experts suggest the actual number is much higher.
“It doesn’t matter whether they’re legal or illegal,” says Pérez Ricart. “There are too many guns in Mexico.” He says ending the illegal trade is not enough to end the appalling amount of gun violence in Mexico.
