Sandy Hook Families File Lawsuit Against AR-15 Creators – “It’s No More a Gun Than a Tank Is a Car”

For the most tragic reasons, the town of Newtown, Connecticut is always in our thoughts. Ever since the horrific mass shooting of December 14, 2012, the families of the 26 victims have been putting the pieces of their lives back together.

Sandy Hook Elementary School was wrought with terror when a shooter opened fire with an AR-15 – a military-grade semi-automatic assault rifle – and brutally killed 20 students and 6 teachers. This is the very same weapon that was used in more recent American massacres, such as Aurora, Colorado San Bernardino, California, and most recently, Orlando, Florida. In each of these losses of life, a psychotic American citizen was able to purchase a weapon of mass destruction to end the lives of innocent civilians. Why is it able to exist?

That is the very question on the lips of the Sandy Hook families. For the past two years, they have been assembling a lawsuit against both the manufacturers and sellers of the deadly AR-15. Surprisingly, the legal case has gained a lot of traction. Next week, there will be a hearing that is pivotal to the future of this charge. A court date has been set for two years from now. Regardless of how far the case goes, its very existence opens a dialogue on the ongoing debate of gun rights and the procedure of selling armed weaponry.

Based on a federal law passed in 2005, the makers and sellers of guns are immune to any sort of accountability when one of their guns is used to commit crime (except when the weapon is sold “carelessly”). This lawsuit is striving to overturn this law, and to strip gun makers and sellers of their previous imperviousness.

The families affected in Newtown argue that the AR-15 is a weapon meant solely for the military – this is not a gun that should protect a family; there are smaller and less dangerous guns that could satisfactorily perform that job. They claim that the semi-automatic assault rifle should only be seen during wartime on a battlefield, not on American soil pointed at civilians. Based on this assertion, the sale of an AR-15 to the average American citizen could be seen as negligent.

Though this lawsuit has been in the works for years, the fact that the weapon in question was used in yet another mass shooting will surely add to the argument of the accusing party.

The defendants, particularly the manufacturer (Remington), have been extremely anxious for this legal case to disappear. Multiple movements have been put forward in hopes that this case will never reach trial, and that it will be thrown out altogether.
Such a decision will not be made until October.

What got the ball rolling in this case, was the intrigue of one mother, Jacqueline Barden, and the research she did in the weeks following the death of her son. Her husband, Mark, said, “She was trying to research how the kid around the corner got his hands on a military rifle designed for combat … and carried it into our son’s school to murder him.” The mother of the shooter actually purchased the weapon.

The lawyer of the accusing party, Joshua D. Koskoff, has said that the AR-15 does not belong in the civilian market. “… There is one civilian activity in which the AR-15 reigns supreme,” he said. “Mass shootings. … [Shooters] have unleashed the rifle’s lethal power into our streets, our malls, our places of worship and our schools. … It’s no more a gun than a tank is a car.”

There is no telling how long it will be before change is made in the United States. Major legislative reform will need to take place before anybody can expect a decline in the number of mass shootings that have occurred on American soil. Based on a recent statistic by the Gun Violence Archive, there have been 133 documented mass shootings in the United States so far in 2016. This number cannot be expected to go anywhere but up until this country’s gun laws are seriously reconstructed.

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