The nation of Mexico’s lawsuit against several major US gun manufacturers, known as Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos, was cursed long before it reached the Supreme Court.

Tuesday’s oral argument in the case only confirmed that. It appears that at least seven, and possibly as many as all nine, of the justices will reject Mexico’s argument that gun companies are liable for crimes committed with their products across the US-Mexico border.

Mexico sued seven gun companies plus a company that distributes firearms, claiming that these companies knowingly and unlawfully supply guns to drug cartels. According to a federal appeals court, the defendants in this case “produce more than sixty-eight percent of the U.S. guns trafficked into Mexico, which comes out to between 342,000 and 597,000 guns each year.”

Though the appeals court determined that this case could move forward, at least for now, Mexico’s lawsuit seemed to hit a wall during Tuesday’s argument. All six of the Court’s Republicans plus Biden-appointee Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson sounded highly skeptical of Mexico’s claims, and all nine justices asked questions suggesting that they may not buy Mexico’s legal theory.

One reason why this case is cursed is a 2005 federal law, known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (“PLCAA”), which gives gun companies an unusual level of immunity from lawsuits. Under PLCAA, gun manufacturers are immune from most suits “for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful misuse of firearm products or ammunition products by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.”

PLCAA does allow gun companies to be sued when they “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product, and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for........

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