Last week, in a unanimous opinion in a case called Smith & Wesson v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, the Supreme Court tossed out a lawsuit filed by the Mexican government against seven major U.S. gun manufacturers, seeking to hold them civilly liable for billions of dollars in damages stemming from gun violence committed in Mexico with the manufacturers’ firearms. The court held that a 2005 federal statute prohibits Mexico—or anyone else—from bringing these types of lawsuits in the first place.
The Mexican government has long sought to avoid taking responsibility for the nation’s corruption-fueled and cartel-driven violence woes, including by erroneously casting the violence as an “American gun problem.” In short, the lawsuit was little more than an attempt by a foreign government to interfere with American gun policy and undermine the Second Amendment rights of American citizens.
Instead of villainizing the right to keep and bear arms, Mexico should consider taking it far more seriously as a means of enabling its own citizens to defend themselves against criminal violence.
Every major study has found that Americans use their firearms in self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times annually, according to the most recent report on the subject from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2021, a professor at the Georgetown McDonough School of Business conducted the most comprehensive study ever on the issue and concluded that roughly 1.6 million defensive gun uses occur in the United States every year.
For this reason, The Daily Signal publishes a monthly article highlighting some of the previous month’s many news stories on defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accounts from past months and years here.)
The examples below represent only a small portion of the news stories on defensive gun use during crimes that we found in May. You may explore more by using The Heritage Foundation’s interactive Defensive Gun Use Database.
As these examples demonstrate, the right to keep and bear arms is a powerful tool that enables ordinary people to defend their unalienable rights when the government can’t or won’t be there to do it for them. Sadly, given Mexico’s incredibly restrictive gun laws, most ordinary Mexicans cannot say the same.
The Mexican government has chosen to impose as many barriers as possible between its citizens and their practical ability to exercise their natural right of self-defense. But instead of blaming the lawful American gun industry for its cartel problem, the Mexican government should consider taking a page from our playbook and allowing its people to defend themselves, too.