Sandy Hook families sue gunmaker

Nine families of victims of the school shooting in Newtown, Conn., two years ago, as well as an injured teacher, have filed a lawsuit against those responsible for manufacturing and selling the assault rifle used in the attack.

The families assert that the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle should not have been available for public purchase, according to The Wall Street Journal. The suit says that three defendants should be held as negligent: Remington Outdoor Co., the manufacturer; Camfour, the gun distributor; and Riverview Gun Sales, the local store that sold the weapon.

{mosads}“There is so much ample evidence of the inability of the civilian world to control these weapons, that [it] is no longer reasonable to entrust them to for that purpose,” Joshua Koskoff, one of the attorneys representing the families, told the Journal.

“How many massacres do there have to be before for that is?”

Congress passed a bill in 2005 that protects gunmakers and distributors from most lawsuits over what’s done with those weapons. But the law does allow for some legal challenges, including for certain types of negligence, which is what the families’ suit asserts.

Remington and other gun manufacturers have repeatedly said that the blame should fall on the shooter and his criminal actions instead of on the gun companies, whose products are legal.

The lawsuit comes the day after the two-year anniversary of the tragedy, when 20-year-old Adam Lanza opened fire at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the quiet Connecticut town. He killed 20 school children as well as six of the school’s staff.

Lanza took the gun from his mother, who purchased it legally, and killed her before traveling to Sandy Hook. An investigation found that Lanza was mentally ill and had planned the attack, but officials could not establish a motive.

Senate Democrats and President Obama pushed legislation in the months after the shooting to strengthen background checks for most gun purchases as well as ban a slew of “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines. But those measures could not overcome a filibuster — four Republicans crossed the aisle to support the measure but four Democrats voted against it.

Two relatives of Victoria Soto, a teacher who died while trying to save her students from the attack, expressed frustration about the lack of policy changes stemming from the tragedy.

“We keep seeing this happen,” Jillian Soto, Victoria’s sister, told the paper. “We [keep] seeing mass shootings at school. And something has to be done.”