Supreme Court throws out Mexico’s suit against U.S. gun makers in a unanimous decision

WASHINGTON — Mexico has a severe problem with gun violence, which originates north of the border, the Supreme Court acknowledged Thursday.

“The country has only a single gun store, and issues fewer than 50 gun permits each year. But gun traffickers can purchase firearms in the United States — often in illegal transactions — and deliver them to drug cartels in Mexico,” the court said. These weapons are used to “commit serious crimes — drug dealing, kidnapping, murder, and others.”

Nonetheless, the justices in an unanimous decision threw out Mexico’s lawsuit against the U.S. gun industry, ruling that federal law shields gun makers from nearly all liability.

Justice Elena Kagan said Congress enacted the law in 2005 to prevent gun companies from being sued for harms “caused by the misuse of firearms by third parties, including criminals,” she said.

The law has one narrow exception, she said, that would allow suits if the gun companies had knowingly and deliberately helped criminals buy guns to be sent into Mexico.

But she said Mexico’s lawsuit did not cite evidence for claim.

“Mexico’s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers,” she wrote. “We have little doubt that, as the complaint asserts, some such sales take place — and that the manufacturers know they do. But still, Mexico has not adequately pleaded what it needs to: that the manufacturers ‘participate in’ those sales, as in something that [they] wish to bring about.”