HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — The families of nine of the 26 people killed and a teacher wounded two years ago at the Sandy Hook Elementary School filed a lawsuit Monday against the manufacturer, distributor and seller of the rifleused in the shooting.
The negligence and wrongful death lawsuit, filed in Bridgeport Superior Court, asserts that the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle should not have been made publicly available because it was designed for military use and is unsuited for hunting or home defense.
“The AR-15 was specifically engineered for the United States military to meet the needs of changing warfare,” attorney Josh Koskoff said in a release. “In fact, one of the Army’s specifications for the AR-15 was that it has the capability to penetrate a steel helmet.”
In addition to Bushmaster, the defendants are Camfour, a firearm distributor, and Riverview Gun Sales, the East Windsor store where the gunman’s mother purchased the Bushmaster rifle in 2010.
Messages seeking comment from the defendants were not immediately returned.
Bill Sherlach, whose wife, Mary, was killed in the shooting, said he believes in the Second Amendment but also that the gun industry needs to be held to “standard business practices” when it comes to assuming the risk for producing, making and selling a product.
“These companies assume no responsibility for marketing and selling a product to the general population who are not trained to use it nor even understand the power of it,” he said.
The plaintiffs include Sherlach and the families of Vicki Soto, Dylan Hockley, Noah Pozner, Lauren Rousseau, Benjamin Wheeler, Jesse Lewis, Daniel Barden, Rachel D’Avino and teacher Natalie Hammond, who was injured in the shooting.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified monetary damages.
Nicole Hockley, Dylan’s mother, planned a news conference later Monday morning with U.S. Rep. Elizabeth Esty and U.S. Sens. Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy.
The Newtown gunman, Adam Lanza, shot and killed his mother, Nancy Lanza, on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, before driving to the school and gunning down 20 children and six educators with the semi-automatic rifle. He committed suicide as police arrived.
In 2005, Congress and President George W. Bush approved a federal law that shielded gun makers from lawsuits over criminal use of their products, with some exemptions.
In a lawsuit over the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle used in the Washington, D.C.-area sniper shootings that killed 10 people in 2002, Bushmaster and a gun dealer agreed to pay $2.5 million to two survivors and six families in a 2004 settlement. It was the first time a gun manufacturer had agreed to pay damages to settle claims of negligent distribution of weapons, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.
In that settlement, Bushmaster paid $550,000 and the Washington state gun dealer, where the sniper’s rifle came from, paid $2 million.
In 2002, a federal judge in California ruled that Bushmaster and other gun manufacturers were not responsible for a 1999 shooting spree that killed a postal worker and injured five people at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles. The judge said a lawsuit by the victims’ families did not show a link between the manufacturers and the shooting rampage.
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Associated Press writer Dave Collins in Hartford contributed to this report.
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the Alcohol, Tobacco an Firearms regulatory agency always seemed an incongruous grouping until now. Taxing cigs and booze discourages consumption using the public health rationale. A taxing policy on AR’s so severe may have kept Mom Lanza from making the economic choice that ultimately enabled a massacre.
Maybe the FTC would be more appropriate, since marketing for these weapons included claims of masculinity enhancement.
Where are the taxes on pools, pharmaceuticals, hot dogs and automobiles?
No, I’m not a tea bagger. Yes, I believe in the entire constitution. I voted for Obama twice.
If every person who hates civilians having access to guns is all about the safety of persons why not attack the sources of other “deadly” industries? Forget taxing cigs and alcohol - their death tolls aren’t anywhere in the same ballpark as firearms. They should be eradicated altogether. Research hot dogs. Any parent who feeds their kids hot dogs is totally irresponsible. They kill many people, most of those being children. Pools? I understand the emotions behind these shootings but face it, Adam would have stabbed his mom and others like many Chinese without access to guns do all the time. Or maybe he’d poison people. If you want to kill people in large numbers there are many ways to take lawful products and direct them at your fellow man in ways unintended.
If we had a society that actually cared about its citizens and didn’t ignore or imprison people with psychiatric issues we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
But by all means put Bushmaster out of business for selling shitty plastic ARs.
Don’t know about pools and hot dogs, but the makers of pharmaceuticals and automobiles have been sued many times for producing products that threaten public safety. I don’t expect this lawsuit to succeed under the current interpretations of the second amendment, but I do applaud the effort.
Sued yes, ongoing political movement to end their existence in civilian hands? Not so much. I get it and respect people’s feelings on it but it’s hypocritical and pisses me off when I see other problems not get any attention at all like the FDA being worthless, NHTSA can’t do anything to corporation selling faulty airbags etc.