Last summer marked the first time a foreign government has sued U.S. gunmakers. During “Exporting Mayhem: Suing Gun Manufacturers in the U.S. to Stop Violence in Mexico,” a virtual panel co-sponsored by the Incubator, experts reflected the roots that cause half a million military-style weapons to cross the U.S.-Mexico border every year.
Between 70 to 90 percent of guns recovered at Mexican crime can be traced back to the U.S. Drug cartels smuggle the illegal firearms into Mexico through Texas and Arizona. The lawsuit uniquely condemns gunmakers’ business tactics to “design, market, distribute, and sell guns in ways they know routinely arm the drug cartels in Mexico.”
Alicia Ely Yamin, Senior Scholar-in-Residence at the Incubator, connected the Mexican government’s lawsuit to the settlement between Remington and the families of nine people killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. The firms’ marketing strategies were a focal point for both lawsuits, said Yamin.
The panel was sponsored by the Global Health and Rights Project, a collaboration between the Incubator and the Petrie-Flom Center for Health and Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics at Harvard Law School, and the Mexico program at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Read the full story in The Harvard Gazette.