The Mexican government has sued five Arizona-based gun dealers, alleging they are responsible for illegal arms sales in Mexico.
The lawsuit, filed Monday in US District Court in Arizona, alleges that gun dealers “participate” in the sale of weapons and firearms to Mexican companies by supplying gun dealers. Traffickers are helping to fuel deadly cartel violence in Mexico, court alleges.
“We are suing them because it is clear that there is a pattern, we argue that it is clear that there is a sale of arms and that it is known that these guns are going to our country,” Mexican Foreign Secretary Marcelo Ebrard said in a shared video. Twitter on Monday.
“If we don’t stop this proliferation of weapons in Mexico, how can we stop the violence here?” Ebrard said.
Mexico’s new lawsuit comes just over a week after a US judge dismissed the country’s previous $10 billion lawsuit against American gun manufacturers. Mexico said it plans to appeal the ruling.
The five Arizona retailers named in the lawsuit are Sprague’s Sports, SNG Tactical, Ammo AZ, Diamondback Shooting Sports and Loan Prairie D/B/A The Hub. Three of the gun stores are in Tucson, one in Phoenix and one in Yuma.
The indictment alleges that the five dealers named are among the nation’s most notorious gun traffickers and that they turned Arizona into “the epicenter of this illegal trade.”
The case took aim at alleged dealers involved in weed buying, where a person buys a gun on behalf of another person. Following the sale of the straw, the guns end up in the hands of Mexican cartels, the indictment says.
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Veerachart Murphy, owner of Ammo AZ in Phoenix, dismissed the case as political on behalf of the Mexican government and said he wants to sue the government and Ebrard for defamation.
“The indictment does not accuse me of selling guns across the border,” Murphy said. “You can’t just say that about a gun shop on the world news and get away with it.”
Murphy said he works with agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives almost every day to prevent the sale of firearms and invited Ebrard to spend the weekend at his store to investigate the process and try to find out what he believes. be buying straw.
“(Ebrard) thinks he can go after small shops with a pop gun and try to win and that we’re just going to lie down and close our doors,” Murphy said.
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Frank Hansen, a member of Sprague’s Sports management team at Yuma, said that, although the team has yet to see a complaint, it will gladly respond to any allegations.
“Sprague’s Sports is a family business, and we are a licensed firearms owner and follow the laws and regulations that govern our business,” Hansen said.
SNG Tactical and Diamondback Shooting Sports declined to comment. Representatives for The Hub could not be reached for comment.
The lawsuit alleges that over the past five years, each of the gun shops is among the top 10 dealers with the most guns seized in Mexico and returned to Arizona.
“The organizations responsible for the bloodshed and terror in Mexico are able to do so only because of the Defendant’s deliberate decisions made in Arizona,” the indictment states.
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The indictment also alleges that the traffickers contribute to Mexico’s high homicide rate. At least 17,000 murders in Mexico were linked to arms trafficking in 2019, according to the State Department.
The Mexican lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages and asks that independent monitors be appointed to each of the gun dealers to stop, regulate and monitor their sales practices for a minimum of 10 years.
The appointment of supervisors will ensure that US federal laws are enforced while also preventing traders from continuing to supply cartels in Mexico, the lawsuit says.
“If the United States asks us to support us – and this is a good thing that we can work together against fentanyl, synthetic chemicals, narcotic drugs – we also want them to help us reduce the number of weapons that harm us the most,” Ebrard said.
In an earlier Mexican ruling, a federal judge in Boston ruled the gun manufacturers’ claims did not defeat the protections granted to gun manufacturers by the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005.
The law provides broad immunity there are gun manufacturers from courts or people using their weapons.
Do you have a news story or idea for a story about the border and its communities? Contact the reporter at jcastaneda1@arizonarepublic.com or connect with him on Twitter @joseicastaneda.