The Mexican government is seeking billions of dollars in damages for arms suppliers’ role in cross-border gun trafficking.
The government of Mexico is suing U.S. gun-makers for their role in facilitating cross-border gun trafficking that has supercharged violent crime in Mexico.
The lawsuit seeks US$10 billion in damages and a court order to force the companies named in the lawsuit – including Smith & Wesson, Colt, Glock, Beretta and Ruger – to change the way they do business. In January, a federal appeals court in Boston decided that the industry’s immunity shield, which so far has protected gun-makers from civil liability, does not apply to Mexico’s lawsuit.
As a legal scholar who has analyzed lawsuits against the gun industry for more than 25 years, I believe this decision to allow Mexico’s lawsuit to proceed could be a game changer. To understand why, let’s begin with some background about the federal law that protects the gun industry from civil lawsuits.
COVID had the opposite effect, as this article covers. Motor vehicle deaths rose following a fairly steady decline over the past twenty years. Gun deaths just rose as at a higher pace, going from third following cancer to first.
But just comparing cause of death misses the point, really: this is not a phenomena that peer countries experience. While this has become somewhat accepted as the norm in the US, there’s no real reason we ever had to let it get this bad.
As I said, gang violence.
And again it’s higher because not as many people where driving, is why firearm deaths rose during the pandemic, I didn’t say they dropped.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/2022-deadliest-children-killed-traffic-235000356.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAADA6TGT3hrJQdWLVm_DRywfQIqZ3p4gzK7n51ayq2yZ5TvQ3-FWija5klqZ3O_ZC7bCE2_HZMw1pVmleVT3gYUSOHlXsA2pYVzPepzPpV3ftxXJJVMRgpfqAw4Br2ZcIPzcQxYIDx7rsd8GTJBBxM2Uym9cedfRLwwDrS_xMVNxD