It took a little over a year for one of the most important lawsuits initiated by the Mexican State to run into the US judicial wall. This Friday, federal judge Dennis Saylor has rejected the process that the Foreign Ministry of Andrés Manuel López Obrador began in August 2021 against the 11 main arms manufacturers of its neighbor to the north.
The trial sought to underline the responsibility of those who make and distribute weapons in the violence suffered by large regions of Mexico.
It was known that the path followed by this complaint would not be easy.
The government intended to claim billions of dollars in compensation in court.
Judge Saylor has killed the ambitions.
Mexico, however, will go to the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit.
In his argument, the judge points out that Mexico claims that Smith & Wesson promoted its weapons in advertising, which gave the idea that anyone could make high-powered, military-style rifles.
These types of weapons, the lawyers for the Mexican government pointed out, attracted people and organizations to fight against Mexican soldiers and police.
"Mexico, however, has not identified any common law laws or statutes that are violated by this advertising," says Saylor.
“Even though the defendant's behavior is tactless, nothing in those ads is illegal, immoral, unethical or unscrupulous,” adds the magistrate, referring to the adjectives used by the Mexicans in their lawsuit.
The legal strategy of the chancellery began in a court in Boston (Massachusetts).
By filing the case there, the Mexican government hoped that its case would have more possibilities and find a judge more accustomed to the regulation of weapons instead of others who oppose any control of weapons, as happens in the judicial circuits of Texas, Arizona and other Republican strongholds.
However, one of the arguments made by the US judicial authorities is that Mexico does not have the power to act in the legal process filed against Colt, a manufacturer based in the State of Connecticut.
Mexico indicated that it was entitled to an amount of compensation because arms trafficking violated an agreement on commercial practices of that entity.
The main spokesman for the initiative in the last year has been Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, who had avoided entering into a diplomatic debate that condemned the Second Amendment —the constitutional right in the United States to own weapons— but instead focused his efforts on pointing out the knowledge that manufacturers and distributors have to position their products among criminal groups as potential customers.
Mexico's complaint listed more than a hundred crimes since 2004 in which the weapons used to kill had been illegally trafficked from the US, some 340,000 a year according to calculations by the Mexican government.
Mexican authorities knew that the process would take several years.
They hoped that their arguments could avoid a controversial national law that shields gun manufacturers since 2005 from lawsuits initiated by misuse, such as mass shootings, suicides and homicides.
This, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA, for its acronym in English), makes the already powerful actors almost untouchable.
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