Earlier this month, the Washington Free Beacon published an investigation titled “‘Assault on Our Sovereignty’: How George Soros Funds Foreign Government Lawsuits Against American Gun Makers.” The report detailed how the Open Society Foundations, backed by billionaire George Soros, helped fund Global Action on Gun Violence (GAGV), an international gun control group that partnered with the Mexican government to sue American firearms manufacturers for crimes committed by third parties outside the United States.
While the lawsuit ultimately failed at the U.S. Supreme Court, the case highlights a broader and long-running strategy by Soros-funded organizations to use litigation, rather than legislation, to reshape U.S. gun policy.
The Open Society Foundations and Gun Policy Activism
George Soros has transferred more than $32 billion into the Open Society Foundations, creating one of the most influential private philanthropic networks in the world. The organization funds a wide range of progressive causes globally, including criminal justice reform, election policy advocacy, and gun control.
Soros’s son, Alex Soros, now chairs the Open Society Foundations’ board of directors and is a frequent presence in Democratic political circles. Under both father and son, Open Society has maintained a consistent posture against expansive interpretations of the Second Amendment.
That opposition dates back decades. In 2000, Open Society published a widely circulated report titled Gun Control in the United States, which called for sweeping federal and state gun restrictions. Among its recommendations were criminalizing private firearm transfers, banning low-cost handguns, prohibiting civilian ownership of certain categories of firearms, and expanding federal licensing of gun owners. Even then, the report criticized the Clinton administration’s gun policies as insufficiently ambitious.
At the state level, the report advocated for universal firearm licensing, mandatory gun registration, and so-called gun rationing laws. It also encouraged coordination among states to advance stricter regulatory frameworks.
Funding Advocacy Groups and Litigation Campaigns
Throughout the early 2000s, Open Society provided financial support to numerous gun control organizations, including the Million Mom March, the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, New Yorkers Against Gun Violence, and Women Against Gun Violence. It also backed lawsuits aimed at holding firearm manufacturers liable for criminal misuse of their products, including litigation supported by the NAACP.
In 2013, Open Society awarded a $150,000 grant to the Fund for a Safer Future, a gun control collaborative whose member organizations include Everytown for Gun Safety, the Joyce Foundation, and the Violence Policy Center. This year, the collaborative announced that Rob Wilcox, formerly a co-deputy director of the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, would take over leadership.
Public statements from Open Society grantees have made clear that these efforts are not limited to modest regulatory changes. In a 2016 interview, activist Marlon Peterson, an Open Society grantee, argued that the nation should “reconsider our relationship to the Second Amendment,” accusing the firearms industry of exploiting constitutional protections for profit.
International Coordination and Foreign Litigation
Open Society has also supported international gun control efforts. One prominent example is its relationship with Australian activist Rebecca Peters, who rose to prominence after Australia’s 1996 gun ban and confiscation program. Peters later directed the Funders’ Collaborative for Gun Violence Prevention, which received Open Society funding.
More recently, Open Society has continued to fund major U.S. gun control groups, including the Brady Campaign, March for Our Lives Action Fund, and Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
In 2023, Open Society awarded a two-year, $300,000 grant to Global Action on Gun Violence. Open Society is also listed as a “philanthropic partner” on GAGV’s website.
GAGV’s stated strategy is explicit: to use litigation against the U.S. firearms industry, particularly for harms allegedly suffered outside the United States, to force changes in industry practices beyond what U.S. law requires. Critics argue that such lawsuits aim to impose gun control policies through courts that lawmakers and voters have repeatedly rejected.
The PLCAA and the Mexico Lawsuit
This strategy runs directly into the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed in 2005 with bipartisan support. The law prohibits lawsuits against firearm manufacturers and dealers for harm caused by the criminal misuse of their products by third parties. It codified a longstanding principle of American tort law: manufacturers are not liable for crimes committed with lawful products.
GAGV’s most prominent case, Smith & Wesson Brands v. Estados Unidos Mexicanos (2025), sought to hold U.S. gun manufacturers financially responsible for cartel violence in Mexico. The lawsuit argued that American firearms companies should be liable for criminal activity occurring beyond U.S. borders, despite Mexico’s own firearms laws and enforcement failures.
Mexico’s legal team included longtime Brady Campaign attorney Jonathan Lowy, now affiliated with GAGV. In October 2022, Politico reported that GAGV registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), with Lowy and another former Brady attorney listed as agents of the Mexican government. GAGV’s website confirms it is registered as an agent for the governments of Mexico and the Bahamas.
Supreme Court Rejection
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously rejected Mexico’s claims in a 9-0 ruling, holding that the lawsuit was barred by the PLCAA. In a concurring opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson emphasized that Congress enacted the PLCAA specifically to prevent activists from using litigation to impose gun policies that legislatures had declined to enact.
She noted that such lawsuits were designed to pressure manufacturers into adopting practices “that exceeded what state or federal statutes required,” and that the PLCAA represented Congress’s “express rejection” of that strategy. Mexico’s case failed, she wrote, because it sought to hold “the industry writ large” responsible for conduct that lawmakers and voters had chosen not to prohibit.
Implications Going Forward
The failed Mexico lawsuit underscores the limits of using foreign governments and international litigation as tools to reshape American constitutional rights. But it also highlights the persistence of advocacy networks willing to pursue those strategies despite repeated legal setbacks.
As the Soros-funded Open Society network continues to face public scrutiny, gun owners and policymakers alike are likely to remain focused on how philanthropic funding, foreign partnerships, and litigation campaigns intersect with domestic constitutional law. Whether future efforts will shift tactics or continue pressing the courts remains an open question, but the underlying objective has been consistent for decades: altering the scope and application of the Second Amendment outside the legislative process.
