In 2005, the Supreme Court’s Heller decision, which for the first time in American history acknowledged the Second Amendment recognizes the unalienable, individual right to keep and bear arms, was three years into the future. Anti-Liberty/gun cracktivists were pushing their latest strategy: suing gun makers for the third-party acts of people about who they had no knowledge and over who they had no control for misuse of their lawful products. 

The strategy was to bankrupt American gun makers by an avalanche of nuisance lawsuits. American tort law doesn’t normally allow such suits, but their sheer volume might do the trick, even if gun makers won every suit, and they wouldn’t. There were more than enough leftist judges willing to upend tort law, common sense and justice for political ends, just are there are today. They might have succeeded. Despite what Democrats/socialist/communists (D/s/cs) say, gun makers are not fabulously wealthy.

Graphic: Twitter Screenshot

In an act of bipartisan responsibility we may never see again, Congress passed The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which prevents such nuisance lawsuits for misuse by third parties of lawful products, but does not in any way prevent suits under normal tort law, such as suits for damages for defective products or negligence. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have long demanded the repeal of the PLCAA, claiming gun makers can’t be sued at all. They lie.

While the PLCAA has ended most attempts at anti-liberty/gun lawfare, leftist judges continue to try to ignore or misinterpret it to allow such suits to proceed. One such has been filed by the Mexican government against American gun makers, claiming they are purposely making guns they know will be used by cartels against Mexicans in Mexico.  

A Massachusetts District Court used the plain language of the PLCAA to dismiss the suit, but the Fifth Circuit reversed the dismissal, which led the US Supreme Court to grant cert. The case will be decided during the Court’s 2025 term. The petition that led to cert raised these two legal issues:

*Whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States is the "proximate cause" of alleged injuries to the Mexican government stemming from violence committed by drug cartels in Mexico.

*Whether the production and sale of firearms in the United States amounts to "aiding and abetting" illegal firearms trafficking because firearms companies allegedly know that some of their products are unlawfully trafficked.

Both arguments are easily resolved. American manufacturers are limited to producing only semiautomatic arms. Some still make automatic weapons, but that market is limited only to law enforcement and the military. The Firearm Owner’s Protection Act established that machineguns made after May 19, 1986, cannot be owned by mere citizens. One can own a machinegun made before then, but owners aren’t selling, and when they do, they command astronomical prices. Needless to say, all automatic weapon domestic sales and exports are strictly controlled. Why would cartels want semiautomatic weapons when they can easily get actual military arms through the Mexican government and illegal sources, including nations hostile to America?

Car makers know some of their products will be illegally used, sometimes resulting in the deaths of innocents. Obviously, gun makers know the same. They know criminals will steal their lawfully sold products. They know criminals will “traffic” them, selling them not only to other criminals, but potentially even to Mexican cartels, though again, why would cartels bother with that when they can get all the guns they need through more convenient, established sources? 

Bizarrely, gun makers also know our own government under Barack Obama actually trafficked guns to cartels in the Fast and Furious debacle, guns that were eventually used to murder a Border Patrol officer. His killer was convicted, but his sentence was overturned in 2024. Were gun makers responsible for that lunacy?

But can’t cartels buy American guns legally in Mexico? Theoretically, yes, but there is only a single gun store in all of Mexico, in Mexico City, and it’s run by the Mexican military. Gun ownership in Mexico is all but impossible, and if cartels get American made guns from that store, it’s because the Mexican government wanted them to have them.

Obviously, this is the kind of legal subterfuge the PLCAA was intended to end. The house vote was 65-31 and the Senate voted 283-144 for the bill. Imagine that happening today. Of course, under a D/s/c controlled White House, House and Senate, the PLCAA, and many other liberties, would surely be obliterated.

With any luck, common sense and legal sanity will prevail and the Supreme Court will strike down Mexico’s attempt to subvert our liberty, the better to weaken America. We’ll take what we can get while we still can.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.