Tucson shops named in Mexico lawsuit against arms dealers

Leer en españolThe government of Mexico sued three Tucson gun shops and two others elsewhere in Arizona on Monday, accusing them of knowingly arming Mexico’s drug cartels.

The lawsuit, filed in Tucson’s federal court, is the second one Mexico has pursued in an effort to target those businesses the Mexican government alleges to be supplying arms to organized crime in Mexico.

Diamondback Shooting Sports, 7030 E. Broadway; SnG Tactical, 3441 S. Palo Verde Road; and The Hub, 1400 S. Alvernon Way are named as defendants in the suit. So are Ammo AZ in Phoenix and Sprague’s Sports in Yuma.

Mexico’s first lawsuit, which was recently dismissed, targeted U.S. gun manufacturers, while this one targets retailers that, the new lawsuit claims, knowingly sell guns to “straw” purchasers, who pass them to smugglers who take them into Mexico.

“We are suing them because clearly there is a pattern, we contend that it is obvious that there is weapons trafficking and that it is known that these guns are going to our country,” Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said.

Ebrard said about 60% of the weapons seized in Mexico in recent years were believed to have been sold in 10 U.S. counties, mostly along the border. The lawsuit points out the Tucson-to-Nogales (Sonora) corridor is considered one of the three busiest corridors for gun smuggling.

Mexico has very strict restrictions on weapon possession, but thousands of weapons get through, and organized-crime violence has cost hundreds of thousands of lives in the country in recent years.

“We are going to show that many of these outlets where they sell these products in these counties I mentioned, are dealing with straw purchasers, and criminal charges have to be brought,” Ebrard said last week in an appearance before the Mexican Senate.

A recently enacted U.S. law defines straw purchasing as a crime, and sets out sentences of as much as 15 to 25 years if the offense is related to drug trafficking.

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“A small minority of gun dealers — fewer than 10% — sell about 90% of crime guns,” the lawsuit says. “Defendants are part of the small percentage of dealers that sell virtually all crime guns recovered in Mexico. Arizona is a hotbed of the unlawful gun trafficking into Mexico; these defendants made it so.”

The lawsuit argues that straw-buyers bypass hundreds of other gun dealers in Arizona to go to these shops.

“Over the last five years, each of these defendants is among the 10 dealers with the most crime guns recovered in Mexico and traced back to a dealership in Arizona,” the lawsuit says.

The announcement comes several days after a U.S. federal judge dismissed Mexico’s first lawsuit against U.S. gun manufacturers. The judge ruled Mexico’s claims did not overcome the broad protection provided to gun manufacturers by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act passed in 2005. Ebrard said Mexico would appeal that decision.

That law shields gun manufacturers from damages “resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse” of a firearm.

A 2013 study found that 2.2% of all U.S. gun sales were of weapons smuggled to Mexico, an average of 253,000 per year. Thousands of gun dealers were kept in business by the sale of firearms illegally intended for smuggling to Mexico, which was worth about $127 million per year, the study found.

Representatives of the firearms industry disputed the findings and pointed out that in many cases it is impossible for a gun dealer to know that a legal gun buyer intends to pass their purchases on to buyers in Mexico.