Lawsuits, like every tool, have their place. For example, the multiple lawsuits filed against the Biden administration’s illegal use of executive orders to try to implement red flag laws and even more gun control across the nation because they couldn’t get it through Congress. Those lawsuits are the right thing because those executive orders need to be torn to shreds.
But, like every tool, lawsuits can also be used in ridiculous ways, and lawsuits are used for harassment far too often.
In fact, many (including me) would argue that all lawsuits against gun manufacturers trying to blame those manufacturers for gun violence are utterly absurd. Those manufacturers never forced anyone to pull a trigger, and lawsuits against those manufacturers are nothing but harassment to try to punish them for providing a product that law-abiding people like you and me want to own for our own personal safety.
Another lawsuit against firearms manufacturers has come up that you may not have heard of, and that lawsuit is the country of Mexico is suing Smith & Wesson, trying to blame Smith & Wesson for their gun violence problem. Predictably, seventeen anti-2A attorney generals from U.S. states and Washington, D.C. joined in to try to pile on against Smith & Wesson.
The whole thing is wrongheaded in every way possible. In fact, the problem that Mexico is trying to blame Smith & Wesson for isn’t even remotely Smith & Wesson’s fault. John Seiler explains:
The announcement [from California Attorney General Rob Bonta] adds:
“In Mexico, legally purchasing a firearm is nearly impossible. The country has one gun store and issues fewer than 50 gun permits per year. Despite this, an estimated 200,000 firearms are trafficked into Mexico from the United States every year.
He doesn’t see it—or won’t tell us. The problem in Mexico is not too many guns, but too few. The cartels have weapons, but the citizens don’t and can’t shoot back. Currently, there are about 52,799 gun stores in Estados Unidos—or one for every 6,250 people. Plus gun shows. And a legacy of gun ownership going back well before the country’s glorious founding in blaze of Revolutionary self-defense using guns against King George III’s tyranny in 1776.
It’s hard to gain an estimate, but a reasonable one from The Trace puts it at “about 352 million guns in circulation,” out of 465 million produced since 1899.
America does have a problem with drug cartels becoming more active. But the problems we’ve been reading about lately in Mexico of kidnapping Americans for ransom are much less likely to occur here, because the cartels know we citizens are heavily armed.
That’s right. Cartel kidnapping of Americans rarely happens in the U.S., where guns are relatively common, but those kidnappings are common in Mexico where legal private gun ownership is rare.
It’s not hard to see the correlation. It’s the same correlation that we see in Chicago, Baltimore, and other major U.S. cities who have implemented strict gun control. Gun violence has increased with the stricter gun control, almost certainly because law-abiding private citizens can’t shoot back.
Mexico’s lawsuit against Smith & Wesson is based on a nonsense premise that guns (and gun manufacturers) are the problem. The truth of the matter is that more guns are the solution to their violence problem.