Sandy Hook families have one last chance to make gunmaker pay for massacre

Remington, the company that manufactured the military-style assault rifle used in the Sandy Hook massacre, is going head-to-head with the victims’ families in a case that could change how gunmakers advertise — but only if the families’ unconventional argument succeeds.

Ten families, nine of whom lost family members in the shooting, are suing Remington, arguing that the company is liable for the tragedy because it negligently marketed military weapons to civilian young men, who pose a heightened risk of misusing the guns. Also named in the suit are a gun wholesaler and a local shop. The case wound its way through Connecticut’s court system up to the state’s Supreme Court, where oral arguments began Tuesday.

“Remington may have never known Adam Lanza, but they had been courting him for years,” Josh Koskoff, a lawyer for the families, told the justices.

A 2005 law shields gun manufacturers from most liability when people are killed using their products. But the Sandy Hook families are trying to argue that the gunmaker’s advertising, which features military imagery and macho slogans like “consider your man card reissued,” count as “negligent entrustment,” an exception to the rule that occurs when companies knowingly sell products their consumers have a high risk of misusing to cause harm.

That’s an unconventional argument in the gun control debate, and one that’s failed in court so far for the families. A lower court dismissed this case earlier in the year, finding that the ads weren’t negligent and that the law protected Remington from liability, a result that the gunmaker’s lawyers urged the court to uphold in court Tuesday.

“What happened in the school that morning was horrific,” James Vogts, Remington’s lawyer, said. “But no matter how much we wished those children and teachers were still alive, the law needs to be applied.”

The families are urging the court to reinstate the case and send it back to a lower court for full consideration. There, the evidence discovery stage could yield documents that show how gunmakers market military rifles like the AR-15 — used in Sandy Hook, Texas, and numerous other mass shootings around the country — to young civilian men.

The AR-15 is a semi-automatic civilian version of the standard issue machine gun American soldiers use in combat. Ian Hockley, the father of one of the Sandy Hook victims, criticized Remington for marketing a weapon to civilians that’s tightly regulated and comes with extensive training in the military.

“The manufacturer of the [AR-15] takes no such precautions when unleashing their product into the civilian market. They could not care less what happens to their guns once the cash is in the bank, showing an utter disregard for the lives this weapon takes and the families it destroys,” Hockley said, reading a statement outside the courthouse.

Each day the court deliberates, the number of mass shootings grow — and the trend shows no sign of stopping. This year was the deadliest for mass shootings in modern U.S. history, and even extremely niche gun-control measures remain stalled in Congress.