Gun maker seeks dismissal of school shooing suit

Adam Lanza, 20, stole his mother’s legally obtained weapons on December 12, 2012, before murdering her at home and 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.

The plaintiffs’ lawyers argue in the lawsuit that the Bushmaster rifle used in the shooting is too unsafe to sell to the general public. Documents released after the shooting revealed Lanza fired more than 150 bullets in less than five minutes.

Legal precedent is not in the plaintiffs’ favor. These obstacles became evident when an earlier generation of anti-gun activists filed suit against manufacturers of handguns beginning in the late 1990s. People kill people. If you do happen to find a gun killing someone then it was defective to a severe degree and the manufacturer can rightly be held liable for that single instance of damage.

The victims’ families say they’re suing under an exception in the law.

The family of Vicki Soto said their belief is that the gun should never have been in the hands of a civilian.

“The manufacturers of these deadly weapons have to be held accountable”, Blumenthal said. “Time and time again, mentally unstable individuals and criminals have acquired an AR-15 easily and they have unleashed the rifle’s lethal power onto our streets, our malls, our places of worship and our schools”.

State Sen. Richard Blumenthal said the families of the victims deserve their day in court.

“This is a weapon with a high degree of lethality and we have no access to how they market their product and who they market it to”, said William Sherlach, whose wife Mary was killed. The parent company of Bushmaster Firearms, a South Carolina-based company called Freedom Group, argues that it is protected by federal law. “We want to pull that curtain back and peel that onion and see what they have been doing to fuel the rage from these mostly young males who use their guns”. Lawyers for the company argue that Congress passed the 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, to protect gun makers from lawsuits over the criminal use of firearms, after determining the lawsuits were an abuse of the legal system. The law blocks liability lawsuits against gunmakers when their products were used criminally.

Remington is trying to have the case dismissed.

The Illinois Supreme Court cited the 2005 law to dismiss a 2009 lawsuit against a gun manufacturer by the family of a child accidentally shot by his friend. The families who filed say the gun used in this case should not be sold to the public and they say there’s an exception to the federal law that the gun maker says protects them here.

The attorney for the families said he knows the gun maker did not break any laws, but said there is a difference between what is lawful, and what is negligent.