Gun violence has claimed more than 100,000 lives in Mexico over the last decade.

We are seeing more victims coming across the border for medical treatment as a result of various kinds of cartel activity.

It's not just got caught in gunfire in the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is a whole new level of cartel violence.

And yet, there's just one, one, gun store in the entire country.

Illegal guns are coming across the border from the United States,

and the Mexican government has had enough.

I'm Gustavo Ariano.

You're listening to The Times, Daily News from the LA Times.

It's Tuesday, March 1st, 2022.

Today, why the Mexican government filed a federal lawsuit against several U.S. gun companies and a look into who's been hit the hardest by the illicit firearms flooding

south of the border into Mexico.

Gene Guerrero is an op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times, and last year she wrote about the personal connection that she's had with gun violence in Mexico.

So my cousin, he had just turned 16. His name's Diego Maximiliano Rosas Valenzuela. He was kidnapped just a few days after his 16th birthday, and less than a year after I had left

Mexico City, I had been living there for a few years, and he and his mom and many of my other cousins

had kind of really just gone out of their way to make me feel at home when I moved there.

And I just spent a lot of my time with them.

And, yeah, he was kidnapped at gunpoint, obviously.

And the family got together as much of the money as they could.

And ultimately, they never got Diego back.

I'm sure your family all these years later, they still warned that.

Well, Veronica, his mom, has not accepted that he's even gone.

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