Editorial: Good for Mexico for suing U.S. gun makers

The unlawful traffic across the southern U.S. border is not one-way, a fact driven home by the federal lawsuit filed this month by the Mexican government against a host of U.S. gun manufacturers and distributors. It’s a somewhat brazen — and welcome — move.

The U.S. is the indirect armament supplier for deadly drug wars in Mexico and the gangsters of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The American appetite for illicit narcotics draws drugs northward; the “iron river” of weapons flows south; Mexican and Central American society is torn apart by terror and murder; desperate refugees of gang violence come north. Traffic both ways is heavy. So is the death toll.

Mexico vs. Smith and Wesson was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. Defendants include Beretta, Century Arms, Colt, Glock, Ruger, Smith & Wesson and Interstate Arms.

Predictably, the small arms industry responded to the suit with shock, derision and denial. Gun advocates insisted that the Mexican gangsters use guns made in China or India, not here. And besides, they argue, a lawsuit is a waste of time and money, and is doomed to failure. From their reaction you’d think Mexico had demanded something truly crazy, like, say, a border wall.

In fact, a majority of guns in Mexico can be traced to U.S. distributors — which import and resell foreign-made weapons — and to U.S. manufacturers.

The sales are rarely direct, because gun ownership in Mexico, although not uncommon, is sharply restricted. The suit alleges that sales take place in the U.S. for illicit shipment to Mexico. The key allegation is that the gun makers not only know their weapons will end up south of the border but also create them specifically for that market. One often-cited example is a Colt .38 Super pistol engraved with a picture of Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata. The gun was used in 2017 to murder the investigative journalist Miroslava Breach.