The Supreme Court has made it harder to sue gun manufacturers when their weapons are frequently used in crimes.
The justices ruled unanimously Thursday that claims in a lawsuit the Mexican government brought against seven major American gun makers were too tenuous to try to hold the companies liable for guns eventually being used in murders and robberies.
Mexico claimed the gun manufacturers knowingly allowed large volumes of weapons to be sold to “rogue dealers” who were lax in vetting their customers. Often, those guns were then routed to Mexican drug cartels, Mexico said.
But the high court, in an opinion by Justice Elena Kagan, said Mexico could not plausibly show that the gun makers “aided and abetted” illegal retail sales of guns because the weapons first traveled through a network of wholesalers before reaching dealers who might have knowledge that the weapons were likely to be illegally trafficked to Mexico.