St. Vincent and the Grenadines is one of the CARICOM states that has joined Mexico in a lawsuit against US firearms manufacturer.
St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, and Trinidad and Tobago, along with the Latin American and Caribbean Network for Human Security (SEHLAC), a network of non-governmental organizations and affiliated professionals specializing in international humanitarian law, is seeking disarmament in the Latin American and Caribbean region.
The brief submitted by Mexico in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit is a $10 billion lawsuit seeking to make US gun manufacturers accountable for the harm their goods have caused.
In the $10 billion lawsuit, seven major gun manufacturers and one wholesaler and distributor are listed as defendants.
“Mexico has approached CARICOM asking us as independent sovereign states with the same problem to join the fight to test it in the American courts to hold the manufacturers and distributors of handguns and assault weapons responsible for the mayhem they have unleashed on our societies,” Trinidad PM Keith Rowley said.
In their petition to the court, the countries argue that “illegal trafficking of American guns must be limited at its source: the American firearms industry.”
The statement states that the “brief claims that US gun industry tactics, particularly the bulk sales of firearms to dealers who are known to participate in actions associated with illicit weapons smuggling, have caused considerable harm to Latin American and Caribbean countries.”
The brief argues that the US district court could order the defendants, the US gun manufacturers, “to reduce the violence committed abroad involving their products by adopting’reasonable retail and manufacturing practices,'” including refraining from supplying the small number of dealers ‘whose misconduct precipitates the vast majority of illegal firearms trafficking,’ committing to only work with dealers who take measures to ensure the guns are not sold to criminals, and committing to only work with dealers who take measures to ensure the guns are not sold
