The Daily - Why Mexico Is Suing U.S. Gunmakers

Episode Date: August 24, 2021

For years, Mexico has been gripped by horrific violence as drug cartels battle each other and kill civilians. In the last 15 years alone, homicides have tripled. The violence, the Mexican government says, is fueled, in part, by American guns. Now Mexico is bringing a lawsuit against 10 gun manufacturers in a U.S. federal court, accusing them of knowingly facilitating the sale of guns to drug cartels in the country. How did the situation get to this point, and what arguments are being mounted by the Mexican government?Guest: Natalie Kitroeff, a correspondent covering Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean for The New York Times. Sign up here to get The Daily in your inbox each morning. And for an exclusive look at how the biggest stories on our show come together, subscribe to our newsletter. Background reading: For years, Mexican officials have complained that lax U.S. gun control was responsible for devastating bloodshed in Mexico. Earlier this month, they moved their campaign into American courts. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro. This is The Daily. Today, Mexican officials have long complained that America's lax approach to guns is responsible for devastating bloodshed across their country. Sabrina Tavernisi spoke with our colleague, Natalie Kitchoeff,

about the lengths that Mexico is now willing to go within the U.S. to try to solve the problem. It's Tuesday, August 24th. So, Natalie, how did you hear about this lawsuit? So, the other week, I was called to an early morning briefing at the foreign ministry in Mexico, along with a group of journalists, for a special announcement. They said it was going to be big news. And it turned out that it was. They told us the Mexican government had filed a lawsuit

against 10 gun companies in Massachusetts federal court, accusing them of knowingly facilitating the sale of guns to drug cartels in Mexico. Essentially, what they were saying is that gun manufacturers in the United States were responsible for gun violence in Mexico. And they told us this was the first time that a foreign government had ever sued the makers of guns in the United States. Wow, that's kind of amazing. But why would Mexico sue American companies for a problem happening in Mexico? Well, Mexico today and for years has been gripped by a kind of horror show of violence. Almost 130 people have been killed in one day of drug cartel violence in Mexico. As drug cartels battle each other, kill civilians.

You've got cartels moving like major paramilitary groups, mass graves with more than 250 bodies. On average, there are 94 homicides recorded in Mexico every day. That's four people murdered every hour. Over the last 15 years alone, homicides have tripled. Stop! Stop the fire! Another bloody crime scene in Jalisco State. 11 construction workers shot dead in Tonala. This is violence, murders that, you know, rock Mexican streets.

Its families live with this day in and day out. It is a carnage that really seems to know no end. And this is violence that the Mexican government says is fueled in part by American guns. Natalie, why is the government saying that? Well, gun laws in Mexico are extremely restrictive. It's really, really difficult for a private citizen to get their hands on a gun. First of all, there's only one gun shop in the entire country, and it's behind a fortress-like wall on a military base. It's operated by the military.

Wow, there's only one gun store in all of Mexico? Yeah, and it's really hard to get in. Just to set foot in the door, you have to go through months and months of background checks. And once you get in, the highest caliber you can get is a.38 pistol. This is a country that has made it really difficult for private citizens to buy guns. And as a result, drug cartels and other criminal groups end up arming themselves with American weapons. end up arming themselves with American weapons. The U.S. government says that 70% of the guns recovered in Mexico originated in the U.S. The Mexican government says even more, like 90%. Wow. So the contention here is if a gun is being fired in Mexico, in all likelihood, it came from the United States

and it was trafficked here illegally. And how did it end up that way? How are American guns making their way to Mexico, this country where access to guns is so restricted? Well, it wasn't always this way. In the 90s, violence wasn't quite this rampant in Mexico, and homicides weren't as high. But that started to change in the mid-2000s. And part of the reason, the government says, is because of a couple of things to change in the mid-2000s. And part of the reason, the government says, is because of a couple of things that happened in the United States. For one, the U.S. used to have, in the 90s, a ban on assault-style weapons. So it was illegal to sell or manufacture

those kinds of guns. But in 2004, that ban expired. Now, at the same time, in Mexico, the government is dealing with increasingly powerful drug cartels. And so the government launches this all-out assault on drug cartels. And so the cartels have a higher need than ever for firepower to arm themselves, in part, against the government. Wow. So that sounds like a pretty toxic mix. I mean, you have on the one hand, the U.S. So that sounds like a pretty toxic mix. I mean, you have on the one hand, the U.S. gun laws, which are changing, loosening the flow of guns. And then on the other hand, you have the Mexican government essentially at war with the cartels. And all

of that creates this huge demand for weapons. Exactly. Mexican drug cartels at this point need guns more than ever. And it's just become way easier to buy them in the United States. And so the way that the cartels get these guns into Mexico is they work with straw buyers who purchase them in a border state, usually Texas, Arizona, and then smuggle those guns, usually many of them, across the border into the hands of someone who picks them up on behalf of one of these major criminal organizations. So, Natalie, how has Mexico tried to address this problem? The Mexican government acknowledges that it could be doing a better job policing its own border, intercepting more of these arms. And obviously, there's the issue of corruption, where the

cartels, you know, are infiltrating some local governments and that corruption really keeps their business alive. But beyond that, there's not that much more that Mexico is really able to do at this point. They have some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world. They are going after the guys that have stockpiled these weapons. And so the government really turns to the U.S. and tries to pressure the U.S. government to do more to curb this incessant flow of weapons south. And they find a sympathetic ear in the Obama administration. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is in Mexico focusing on the drug war near the U.S. border. Hillary Clinton goes down to Mexico and point blank says,

We have to recognize and accept that the demand for drugs from the United States drives them north. That there's an insatiable demand for drugs in the United States that is fueling the drug cartels. And the guns that are used by the drug cartels against the police and the military, 90 percent of them come from America. But also this flow of weapons south is helping to drive waves and waves and waves of violence. And the Obama administration does devote resources to try to help. They send Mexico all of this really fancy equipment, night vision goggles, body armor. They ramp up patrolling on the border. They make a couple of really high-profile arrests of these traffickers. But ultimately, it doesn't even make a dent in the violence and is actually accompanied by a couple of really high-profile failures.

And what are those failures? So the most famous one was called Operation Fast and Furious, which was what's called a gun-walking operation that was started in 2009 from a field office in Arizona of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Agents allowed suspects to walk away with nearly 2,000 weapons from the United States back into Mexico. The goal of this operation is to allow guns to go into Mexico. And the idea is they're not going to pursue cases against low-level traffickers

because they're going to wait to get the big fish. They're going to build cases. But what actually happened? The ATF lost track of three-quarters of the guns that were sold. Is that they lose track of hundreds of these guns and two of the guns. Two guns connected to Fast and Furious were found at the scene after the shooting death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry on December... Showed up at the site of the murder of a Border Patrol agent in Arizona in December 2010. Oh, man. And this was a major scandal, not just in Mexico,

where high-level officials said they had been kept completely in the dark about this gun-walking operation, but also in the U.S. Why did this Obama administration purposely allow the illegal transfer of more than 2,000 weapons that they knew were going to go to Mexico? The Obama administration faced this outcry. Fast and Furious was a fatally flawed operation. It's the festering scandal that just keeps getting worse for the Obama administration. Over the fact that this Border Patrol agent was killed by guns that the federal government just let flow into Mexico. Today, the committee estimates at least 1,600 weapons,

including.50 caliber sniper rifles, are still out there waiting to kill. This scandal showed to Mexicans and, I think, to the American government that all of these efforts had just been a complete failure. And there was this new understanding at that point that something much more dramatic needed to happen to change the status quo. And then in 2012, something happens in the United States, the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. And that tragic event ends up opening a window for the Mexican government. We'll be right back.

So Natalie, how does the Sandy Hook shooting change things for Mexico? So in 2014, some of the family members of the victims in that shooting end up suing Remington, the maker of the AR-15 gun that was used in the massacre. And that was pretty significant because gun manufacturers are actually generally protected from this type of thing under something called PLACA, the Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act. That statute gives gun manufacturers almost blanket immunity from any lawsuit that could possibly arise from the misuse of the firearms that they manufacture. But the families who lost their kids in the Sandy Hook shooting, they decided to pursue this sort of novel legal argument to get around PLACA. pursue this sort of novel legal argument to get around Plaka. Right. I remember that case. And Natalie, I also remember that you actually interviewed one of the victim's parents on the

show. Can you remind me, what was he arguing at that time? So Plaka, that federal law, it makes it really, really difficult for anyone to sue a gunmaker. But that law contains an exemption. It allows people to sue if the gunmaker violated state or federal marketing practices. And so what these families were arguing was that Remington used illegal marketing practices, that the company had specifically appealed to someone who might want to engage in a kind of lone gunman situation. And it turned out that that argument ended up being pretty successful. They won approval from the Connecticut Supreme Court to go forward with the case, which was a huge deal. It opened this possibility for victims of gun violence to hold the makers of the gun responsible in a situation like this. And the Mexican government

had been watching this case really closely, looking for a potential roadmap for its own litigation against the gun companies. So Natalie, what is the Mexican government arguing in its lawsuit? So the Mexican government has two main arguments in this case, and one of them is very similar to the one used in the Sandy Hook case. It's about marketing. What the government says in its lawsuit is that the gun makers have marketed their weapons in ways that specifically target drug cartels in Mexico. In the north of Mexico, they kill at gunpoint. The reporter of the newspaper La Jornada, Miroslava Breach, is an example.

The government points to the case of this investigative journalist, Miroslava Breach. She's a correspondent for La Jornada newspaper in Chihuahua, which is a border state, and she's known for publishing really tough stories on collusion between the cartels and government officials. In March 2017, she's shot eight times while she's in the car with one of her children about to drive him to school. The gun that was used to kill her was a special edition.38 Colt pistol, which is engraved on one side with the face of Emiliano Zapata, who is a Mexican revolutionary hero, and on the other side

has a phrase that is commonly attributed to him, which is, it is better to die standing than live on your knees. The government says that that engraving is the kind of marketing that is directly targeting Mexican drug cartels. Natalie, that seems like an incredibly sad and really brutal story. But at the same time, I wonder if it's kind of a leap to argue that just because a gun has some image of a Mexican revolutionary, that it's being specifically marketed to cartels. Right. Well, many of the legal experts that I spoke with pointed out that in the United States, it's perfectly legal to engrave a gun with an image of Emiliano Zapata or any other Mexican revolutionary hero. So it'll be really hard to prove that that's supposed to target, you know, a cartel versus anybody else that might be attracted to that particular brand of gun.

Okay, so then what's their second argument? So their second argument is about the way that the gun manufacturers sell their guns. And the contention here on the part of the Mexican government is that the gun manufacturers are not doing the kinds of safety monitoring that they need to do to ensure that their guns don't make it to straw purchasers who then traffic them to Mexico. The Mexican government is claiming that gun makers will sell to any distributor with a license despite, and I'm quoting from the lawsuit here, blazing red flags that those distributors are ultimately conspiring with straw purchasers.

And is this a valid argument? So people told me this is also going to be a really tough argument to make because the government is saying that the gun makers are knowingly allowing their weapons to ultimately get in the hands of cartels. And the legal experts say that's going to be tough to prove in court, not just that they were careless, but that the gun makers actually knew exactly where their guns were going. Carelessness isn't a crime. And so you have to meet a tremendously high legal standard in order for that argument to fly in court. And the Mexican government acknowledges that there is this super high bar to clearing these legal standards in the U.S. But what's interesting is that they're also making

what seems to be a completely novel legal argument. They're saying that PLACA, that federal statute that makes it so hard to sue gun makers, doesn't actually apply to them. What do you mean? Well, the Mexican government is saying that this federal statute never contemplated what would happen if a foreign country

files a suit against gun makers in the United States. They're saying the law prevents people from suing gun manufacturers for crimes committed using American weapons in the U.S., but if the crimes are committed in another country, it's fair game. Interesting. So, Natalie, you're saying that the Mexican government here is arguing something that no victim of gun violence in the United States ever could,

and that's that this law that protects gun makers from being sued by people in the U.S. simply does not apply to Mexico. That's exactly right. And it's something that's never been tried before. It's not clear whether it's even going to succeed. But the legal experts that I'm talking to say it is plausible that it could. So that's really interesting. So then based on that, what do you think the chances that this lawsuit could actually be successful are?

Well, I mean, I think everybody kind of acknowledges that it's still kind of a long shot. I mean, all of the legal experts will tell you that this PLACA federal statute is ironclad and it really offers widespread protection to the gun makers. But at the same time, the Mexican government is pursuing what appears to be an entirely novel legal argument. So it's hard to say how the court is going to read that. And remember, a lot of people were dismissing the likelihood that the Sandy Hook lawsuit, the lawsuit brought by the families of the victims in that massacre, would have any chance at success. But it did. It lasted way longer than anybody thought. And just a few weeks ago, Remington, the gun manufacturer, offered a $33 million settlement in that case, which the families are now considering.

That offer is in and of itself a sign of just how nervous Remington is about this kind of case moving forward. So we really don't know at this point how likely it is that the Mexican government will prevail, but it certainly is something that gun manufacturers and gun control activists are watching right now. And it sounds like for Mexico, the stakes are extraordinarily high. Yes, for Mexico, the stakes could not possibly be higher. The lawyers representing the Mexican government have told me that they're willing to go to the Supreme Court on this. And I don't think it's just about getting a legal win.

They say they want gun makers to fundamentally change their practices around marketing and sales. They want them to act more responsibly. And I also think it's about sending a signal to Washington that the regulations around guns in the United States don't just impact Americans. They directly affect Mexicans as well. This year, even in the middle of a pandemic,

16,000 people have already been murdered in Mexico. This is something that affects Mexicans every single day. They think about it when they wake up, when they go to bed. It's a constant. And while no one would argue that Mexico doesn't bear responsibility for the violence within its own borders, at this point, the government says it will be hard to meaningfully move forward without doing something about the gun problem. Natalie, thank you. Thank you, Sabrina. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. Today, we've hit another milestone, key milestone, in our nation's fight against COVID. On Monday, U.S. regulators granted full approval to the COVID-19 vaccine from Pfizer-BioNTech, a decision that could broaden the number of Americans willing to take the vaccine and the number of employers willing to mandate vaccinations. and the number of employers willing to mandate vaccinations. Until now, many Americans skeptical of COVID-19 vaccines have cited the fact that the FDA allowed their use on an emergency basis and had not fully approved any of them, a barrier that President Biden says has now been removed.

It has now happened. The moment you've been waiting for is here. It's time for you to go get your vaccination and get it today. Today. And the Taliban is warning the U.S. not to extend its August 31st deadline for pulling out all American troops from Afghanistan, a possibility

being debated by the White House to ensure the evacuation of Americans and American allies. A spokesman for the Taliban warned that remaining past the deadline would create mistrust and, quote, provoke a reaction. trust and, quote, provoke a reaction. Today's episode was produced by Claire Tennesketter, Jessica Chung, Austin Mitchell, and Nina Potok. It was edited by Anita Bonajoe and Larissa Anderson, and engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for The Daily. I'm Michael Barbaro. See you tomorrow.