(NewsNation) — Republican prosecutors, lawmakers and gun rights advocacy groups are asking the Supreme Court to take up a case brought by the Mexican government that attempts to hold American gun manufacturers responsible for cartel violence.

In an amicus brief filed Tuesday, Montana Attorney General Austin Knudsen and 25 other GOP attorneys general urged the court to hear the case, arguing Mexico should not be allowed to “effectively deprive Americans of their Second Amendment rights.”

Another brief — filed on behalf of Texas Senator Ted Cruz and other federal lawmakers — called the lawsuit “an affront to American sovereignty” and an attempt to “hijack U.S. courts to subject American citizens to Mexican law.”

The case stems from a $10 billion lawsuit the Mexican government filed against U.S. gunmakers in 2021, which accused companies like Smith and Wesson and Colt’s Manufacturing Company LLC of knowingly facilitating the flow of weapons to drug cartels.

A trial court judge dismissed that lawsuit in 2022, citing the bipartisan Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), which protects gun manufacturers and dealers from liability for crimes committed with their products.

However, the Mexican government appealed the decision, and in January, a Boston-based federal appeals court disagreed with the lower court’s ruling, allowing the case to move forward.

The three-judge panel found that Mexico’s lawsuit “plausibly alleges a type of claim that is statutorily exempt from PLCAA’s general prohibition,” Reuters reported.

U.S. Circuit Judge William Kayatta said that was because the law was only designed to protect lawful firearms-related commerce, but Mexico had accused the manufacturers of aiding and abetting illegal gun sales by facilitating the trafficking of firearms, per Reuters.

The companies have denied wrongdoing and told the Supreme Court the prior ruling conflicts with past precedents and should never have been allowed to move forward.

Lawyers for the gunmakers said Mexico is trying to “bully the industry” into adopting gun-control measures that have been “repeatedly rejected by American voters.”

Knudsen and the other AGs said Mexico’s crime problems are a result of the country’s own policy decisions, not American gun manufacturers.

“Mexico is a sovereign nation. It can close its borders if it desires to do so, but it chooses not to,” they wrote.

Over the years, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has embraced a “hugs, not bullets” approach when it comes to the country’s violent drug cartels. The president has also imposed strict limitations on U.S. agents operating in Mexico.

The Mexican government has estimated that 70% of the weapons trafficked to Mexico come from the U.S. and has said that in 2019 alone, at least 17,000 homicides were linked to trafficked weapons.

The National Rifle Association (NRA) disputed those numbers in its petition to the Supreme Court, arguing that only a fraction conclusively come from the U.S. That’s because the only firearms that are actually submitted for tracing are those that are likely to be from America.

If the Supreme Court chooses to hear the case, oral arguments could happen in the fall. Conservatives currently hold a 6 to 3 majority on the nine-member bench.