In what may be a sign of growing desperation, a new anti-gun nonprofit has funded and filed two lawsuits against American firearm manufacturers by the Mexican government, a lawsuit against Smith & Wesson in a Canadian court, and a civil rights complaint with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights – a foreign group with no legal authority in the United States.

Global Action on Gun Violence hopes “international pressure” from their foreign lawsuits will somehow give rise to increased gun control in the United States, according to a recent story in the Trace, which is the propaganda arm of former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s anti-gun empire. Global Action on Gun Violence, or GAGV, has not filed its financial information or been rated by the country’s largest nonprofit watchdogs.

While the GAGV has only been around a few years, its president and founder, Jonathan Lowy, spent decades in the gun-control industry. Lowy worked 25 years as chief counsel and vice-president for legal affairs at the Brady gun control group. In addition to Lowy, GAGV’s chief development officer, chief financial officer and communications manager worked for Brady, too. Lowy is a member of the American Bar Association’s gun violence committee and has written several gun-control stories for major newspapers, including an opinion column for The Washington Post, which was titled “The Mexican cartels can be stopped if we stop supplying them with arms.”

Lowy’s column does not hold the ATF accountable for “Operation Fast and Furious,” which put hundreds of American firearms into the hands of the Mexican drug cartels, who used them to murder Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry in 2010, as well as hundreds of Mexican nationals.

In his interview with the Trace, Lowy acknowledged he created the GAGV out of frustration.

“Ultimately, I was frustrated by the lack of progress and the limits of boldness and imagination in U.S. gun violence prevention efforts. The violence in the U.S. was getting worse. The Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act was enacted, which made it much more difficult to sue the gun industry, which was one way that we made progress when Congress wasn’t taking action. And the Supreme Court was making Second Amendment law much more restrictive,” he told the Trace. “And then I began working with the government of Mexico, which decided to bring a lawsuit against major gun manufacturers. It’s the first country in the world to bring a lawsuit against the gun industry. It was an example of the sort of bold action that you can get working outside of the U.S.”

Lowy also admitted he complied with the Foreign Agents Registration Act – federal law that requires agents of a “foreign principal” to publicly disclose their obligations to the foreign government.

“We’ve registered as a foreign agent for Mexico to enable us to more broadly represent them. That’s not been done by any other group,” Lowy told the Trace.

The GAGV’s legal argument, in both the Mexican and Canadian cases, is that the Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act does not apply “to cases such as this, where the harm was caused abroad.” The PLCAA, which became federal law in 2005, protects American firearms manufacturers from liability when their products are used during the commission of a crime. It does not shield gunmakers from lawsuits arising from defective products.

Lowy did not explain how a Canadian court would enforce an order or judgement in the United States, nor did he say how the lawsuits on behalf of a foreign government would lead to increased gun-control legislation, other than by applying “international pressure.”

Still, one lawsuit will not go away. On Monday a three-judge panel of the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a ruling from a lower court, which dismissed Mexico’s lawsuit after finding it violated the PLCAA.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta, who was nominated to the appeals court in 2012 by President Barack Obama, wrote that Mexico’s lawsuit “plausibly alleges a type of claim that is statutorily exempt from the PLCAA’s general prohibition,” according to Reuters.

Judge Kayatta said the PLCAA “was only designed to protect lawful firearms-related commerce, yet Mexico had accused the companies of aiding and abetting illegal gun sales by facilitating the trafficking of firearms into the country,” according to the Reuter’s report.

‘Frivolous lawsuit’

Pennsylvania attorney Joshua Prince is one of the country’s preeminent Second Amendment specialists. He has represented thousands of individuals, hundreds of gun dealers and dozens of gun clubs and shooting ranges in state and federal cases. He is chief counsel for the Firearms Industry Consulting Group, and frequently posts advice for gun owners, gun dealers and gun clubs and ranges on FICG’s YouTube channels: FICG Federal and FICG Pennsylvania.

“It sounds to me like all they’re trying to do is stir the pot and try to get some attention for the frivolous lawsuits that they’re filing,” Prince said. “This is similar to what we’re seeing here. It’s not much different than Brady suing for atrocities that are not traceable back to the manufacturer. Not one of these entities would go after car manufacturers for deaths associated with DUIs.”

‘Open your imagination’

Most will scoff or even laugh at GAGV’s foreign lawsuits and the infinitesimally small chance they’ll ever result in increased gun control as the plaintiffs’ hope. Even Lowy acknowledges this, but quicky serves up another benefit – perhaps the only benefit – of his group’s litigation: The suits could raise morale among the tired, demoralized gun-banners.

“One of the greatest, perhaps the most dangerous, foes that we face in the gun violence prevention movement is hopelessness. If you open your imagination to look at what the rest of the world does, you realize it’s not hopeless at all,” Lowy told the Trace.

Given the increasing number of unconstitutional post-Bruen “tantrum laws” that are introduced in blue states only to be overturned by the courts, and the consistent wins against ATF’s unconstitutional rules and regulations the courts are handing down, it’s not difficult to understand why the gun-ban industry is feeling a sense of hopelessness.

–Lee Williams for the Second Amendment Foundation’s Investigative Journalism Project. Click here to make a tax-deductible donation to support pro-gun stories like this through the project.

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50 COMMENTS

  1. Well, you can shit in one hand and wish for more gun control in the other, and even standing in a dark closet you can tell they both stink.

  2. Gun banners are hopeless hoplophobes, so it’s fitting that they are feeling hopeless. I can’t help wondering if their mothers even love them.

    • you give them far too much credit for boing people of integrity. This is NOT the case at all. These cheats are simply using their positions as “lawyers” to entice, entrap, then bilk their foolish clients merely to line their own pockets with their gold.

  3. To shut down supplying most arms to Mexican drug gangs we would need to stop supplying the Mexican government with weapons, pressure other countries to do the same, repeat that process with several central and south American countries and seal/enforce our border in about that order. To disarm the gangs lol, lmao even.

    • criminal gangs will always have weapons, they can easily build, buy, or steal them. Unless you eliminate the criminal gang by making it unprofitable or instill the fear of doing wrong by violence. They have tunnels and submarines, besides a pretty open border to traffic people, drugs, weapons, and money as they see fit.

      We already have laws on straw purchases, selling to a cartel or known prohibited persons is already illegal, sneaking guns either way across the border is similarly illegal in both countries, you need customs, import export approvals. The criminals are already breaking all the laws. Gun control is just hoping they can restrict the law abiding and make gun purchases hard for everyone, and that will magically trickle down to the criminals and I guess they will give up?

      • The mexican drug cartels are purchasing vulcan miniguns. And RPG7s. No one can buy that in the USA.
        But they can certainly get them from the Obama Biden administration. Which did supply the cartels with weapons. They even supply the Paris France terrorists with weapons.

  4. If only all of this wasted time, energy, and money was directed at the source of the problem –
    uncontrolled, uncharged, and unpunished gang thuggery in large liberal-run cities.

  6. It pissed me off when Japan petitioned Bill Clinton with a bunch of signatures and gifts to take away Americans gunms. What pissed me off even more is after that he signed the assault weapons ban.
    Why does Congress even bother with the Oath To Office, it’s not like many presidents honor it anyway.
    -And it goes a little something like this.-
    I swear to do everything I can to eliminate the Constitution and destroy The United States of America so help me Foreign Influence.
    and everybody claps, nods, shakes hands and pats each other on the backs.
    Makes me want to puke.

    • Big effin’ deal…. don’t give a shit about a Supreme Court ruling. The precident has already been set in stone by the Dems to just ignore it. Texas should have their National Guard standing on the river bank to keep their property in place, and if FJB threatens to Federalize them, great – they can point their M4s to the South and do the task that they are chartered for.

        • You are correct, I only skimmed the video. The point remains the same that we can’t be the only side paying attention to and giving a shit about SC “interpreting” the Constitution, when the other side completely ignores the rulings against them… if that’s the game plan, then the supposed Civil War 3.0 has started already without a whimper, and we already lost.

        • “How are we supposed to stay sober long enough to watch a TWO HOUR youtube video?”

          I haven’t had a drink since 3-’21. Never felt better/clearer of mind.
          Cast the vid to my garage TV, did three oil changes and a tire rotation while it played. There’s no special effects or significant visual content that requires watching them speak.

  9. I would love to see what kind of a salary these grifters are pulling down.
    Getting paid high six figures to push your commie agendas is a pretty sweet deal.

  11. Should be pretty easy to turn this around on Mexico, since the “iron river” from the US, to the extent that it exists, is primarily from US gov sanctioned sales to the Mexican gov that somehow find their way into the hands of the cartels. Not a majority, but a fair percentage as I recall.

    All based on the lie that 70% of guns used in crimes in Mexico come from the US private market. The correct statement is that the vast majority of crime guns that the Mexican gov suspect came from the US private market and trace actually turn out to be from the US private market, but that’s not a substantial proportion overall.

    So if we really want to make it harder for the cartels to arm up, we could stop selling guns to the Mexican government (though of course China, South America, perhaps former soviet block European countries would just pick up the slack longer term). Or, even better, the Mexican government could stop giving them to the cartels (assuming that there’s a meaningful distinction to be made between the Mexican gov and the cartels in all regions of Mexico).

    • I’ve heard that at least a third of the guns sold to the Mexican Government cannot be accounted for in the armories. And most of the “American” guns seized tend to have the Spanish equivalent of “Property of the Mexican Government” (or similar) engraved on them.

      When a soldier or police officer “defects” to the cartels, they often take their weapon with them.

  12. The cartels can smuggle hundreds of thousands of pounds of cocaine from South America into Mexico, getting any weapon or weapons system into Mexico, or for that matter into the USA is not a problem for them.

    • With 40+ years of “instability” in the area south of Mexico and well into South America (with the exception of the Darien Gap), there’s not exactly a shortage of weapons in the area.

  13. I’m all for relocating the 200 or so introduced wild Hippos in Columbia and moving them to the Rio Grande. Maybe add a few hundered saltwater crocodiles from Northern Australia too. We wouldn’t need any border fences after that.

  14. They’re all internationalists they always have been.
    The libertarians the liberals and the left hate Donald Trump. Because as he states, “it’s America first”. As long as the three L’s get there leg@ lized butt sex and drugs. They’re happy to bend over for these foreign powers.

    They are all quite happy to flood the
    United States with illegal immigrants. Who are the illiterate in their own language of Spanish.

    Why are the 3 L’s so happy, so intent on flooding the United States with dark skinned people who can’t read or write???
    Nearly all of them with no provable job skills. No formal technical education.

    • That’s an easy answer… they’ll only need to be taught which lever to pull after this latest
      “marginalized” group is made whole by the left.

    • Why are the 3 L’s so happy, so intent on flooding the United States with dark skinned people who can’t read or write???

      Education may give them ideas above their caste. Makes it easier to control them by cheating on rules and finances.

  16. So once again, let’s look closely at those who commit this so-called gun violence. Or would that be racist?

  17. Seems like Canada and Mexico should build walls to protect their people from the wild anarchy that is America. I’ll support their GoFundMe campaigns.

  18. “The violence in the U.S. was getting worse.” No, other than the 2020-22 pandemic bump, it’s been down about half what it was in the 1990s. But, gotta push that narrative about the “epidemic”.

    • No, violence levels are up in the major cities and major metropolitan areas. Where most of the US population lives. The same area where the police have been defunded and / or ordered to stand down.

      And the cities are shrinking in population because of this.

      Those who live in the rural areas don’t have as much violence to contend with.

      • “The FBI’s crime statistics estimates for 2022 show that national violent crime decreased an estimated 1.7% in 2022 compared to 2021 estimates:

        “Murder and non-negligent manslaughter recorded a 2022 estimated nationwide decrease of 6.1% compared to the previous year.
        In 2022, the estimated number of offenses in the revised rape category saw an estimated 5.4% decrease.
        Aggravated assault in 2022 decreased an estimated 1.1% in 2022.
        Robbery showed an estimated increase of 1.3% nationally.”

        https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/fbi-releases-2022-crime-in-the-nation-statistics

        Concerning populations of metro vs. rural: decreasing crime rates in rural areas would not outweigh/offset increasing crime in urban areas because, as you point out, the populations in the metro areas are greater than those in rural.

        • I agree that violence over all is down in the USA. And it has been going down for a while now.
          As more and more states have passed constitutional carry. So More guns less crime is working.

          But that is not happening in the major cities run by democrats. They are putting up “massive resistance” to civil rights in those cities. Just like what was done in Virginia and other states, in the 1950s.
          Only now it’s concentrated resistance in those democrat cities.

          Assaults and shootings are up in those essentially disarmed cities. Chiraq, Philadelphia, NYC, San Francisco, Oakland, etc.

          And the democrats know crime has been rising in their areas. Which is why they are lying about crime stats now.

        • “But that is not happening in the major cities run by democrats. … Assaults and shootings are up in those essentially disarmed cities. Chiraq, Philadelphia, NYC, San Francisco, Oakland, etc.”

          Homicides dropped by over 10% in America’s biggest cities in 2023

          “In particular, the five biggest cities in the US – New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Phoenix – each saw homicides fall by over 10%, according to the latest data from those police departments. …

          “There are exceptions, too, including cities like Washington DC, which saw a 35% increase in homicides, and Memphis, which saw a 42% increase in murders.

          “And while most violent crime types have fallen over the past few years, there is one notable exception: Motor vehicle thefts increased 10.1% in the period of January to September 2023 compared to the same period a year earlier, FBI data show. In cities over 1 million people, motor vehicle thefts increased 35%, the data show.”

          https://www.cnn.com/2024/01/04/us/homicide-crime-declines-cities-2023/index.html

          Pssst — the increase in auto thefts? Do the brands Hyundai and Kia ring a bell?

        • As I have said before. Crime is “down” were the three L’s live and work. The Rural county areas and suburbs.
          But the Bernard Geotz cast is a great example. Same for the Daniel Penny case.

          People keep saying crime is down. The people who say that, they aren’t traveling in the places that ordinary people travel thru. They aren’t using public transportation like ordinary citizens are.

          Where it is illegal for you to carry any kind of self-defense weapon.

          How many hundreds of thousands or millions of Americans travel daily inside “sealed tubes on wheels” where they can’t escape, if they’re attacked.

          Assaults, robberies, rapes, murders, occur on public transportation all the time. The B.A.R.T. system, the DC Metro, the NYC subway.

          Crime is up where millions of people use public transportation.
          And if you can survive and get back to your low crime rate residential neighborhood, good for you.

        • “Pssst — the increase in auto thefts? Do the brands Hyundai and Kia ring a bell?”

          We used to hang horse thieves years ago. We should hang car thieves as well.

        • alien,

          Are you an idiot, or do you just play one on the Internet???

          Homicides dropped in 2023??? From WHAT BENCHMARK???

          (And then we have cities that heven’t dropped at all, but have in fact increased, in recent years.)

          And we can blame the manufacturers for not making their cars “thief-proof”??

          Don’t know what you’re smokin’, Dude, but that’s gotta be some GREAT sh*t!!!

        • Lamp, I included the link in my post — even though CNN is a questionable source at times, the crime figures are from local police departments in those cities and the FBI national data also quoted in my preceding post. I grabbed that article because it came up early in my search and the basic contention is expressed in articles from several other sources (see the search result).

          “From WHAT BENCHMARK???”

          From the rates of violent crime in the previous year, 2022, which was a continuation of the overall violence we witnessed which peaked in 2020 and 2021.

          Serpent Vision pointed out the same trend: “other than the 2020-22 pandemic bump,” crime rates have been steadily decreasing for years. I was responding to Chris’s contention that crime is up, especially in large cities. The figures do not support his conclusion, which is what I took issue with in my responses.

          “(And then we have cities that heven’t dropped at all, but have in fact increased, in recent years.)”

          Also mentioned in my post.

          “And we can blame the manufacturers for not making their cars “thief-proof”??”

          I’ve determined that the major driver of increased auto-theft rates in large cities (also mentioned in the CNN article) was the Hyundai/Kia fiasco which came to a head in 2020 and 2021 — “opportunity crime” which was exacerbated by social media (YouTube videos on “how to steal a Hyundai”). It didn’t have to happen — the manufacturer failed to include a basic security feature that other auto builders were routinely including (Hyundai itself installed ignition immobilizers in most of their higher-end models but made a penny-pinching decision to leave it out of their cheaper — and more numerous — vehicles.) Other makes did not experience greatly increased theft rates on the scale of Hyundai/Kia. That’s a long and detailed discussion by itself which I’ve opined upon in the past. To draw a parallel — if you leave your car doors unlocked and keys in the ignition, are you totally blameless if your car gets stolen?

  19. Huh. Does this mean Mexico can be sued for all the illegal aliens and drugs coming through their country?

  20. If impoverished bandits and guerillas in third world countries, thousands of miles away from the nearest U.S. border, can get military grade weaponry, why do these bozos suppose that wealthy Mexican cartels can’t do the same? There are plenty of weapons made in countries other than the U.S., so even if the U.S. stopped manufacturing such guns, there would be plenty available from countries like Russia, China and North Korea. Likewise, there is no shortage of materials, machinery and skilled labor in Mexico, if the cartels decided to make their own guns.

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