When asked by Bellis whether the Remington lawsuit was based on similar legal grounds as lawsuits against cigarette manufacturers, Vogts said that lawmakers need to set gun policy and that the gun industry is heavily regulated.
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Gun rights advocates have countered that AR-style rifles – despite their military appearance – are no more unsafe than typical wooden-stock semi-automatic rifles and that efforts to restrict so-called assault weapons confuse cosmetics with lethality.
The families of nine children and adults killed at the Newtown school and a teacher who survived are suing Remington Arms, the parent company of Bushmaster Firearms, which made the AR-15-style rifle used in the shooting.
Josh Koskoff, attorney for the plaintiffs, told the court that advertising for the rifle was targeted “particularly [to] younger men who were military wannabees”.
“After this awful tragedy in Newtown it’s really not the role of this court (to decide) whether civilians as law-abiding people are not appropriate owners of this gun”, Vogts said in Superior Court in Bridgeport, Conn. “Camfour didn’t sell the firearm to Adam Lanza”.
“My family and those represented here stand in solidarity with the families from Orlando”, Matthew Soto said.
Assault weapons were banned in CT after the Sandy Hook assaults, and on Monday the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to the law. A hollow depiction of Remington’s defense in the case.
Judge Barbara Bellis must rule on the gunmaker’s motion to dismiss the case within the next four months. In October, for example, a Milwaukee gun shop was found liable for selling a gun used to kill two police officers, whose buyer made it clear he meant to give the weapon to someone not legally allowed to purchase it for himself: the first time in a decade that a gun shop was held liable for one of its sales.
A victory for the Sandy Hook families might provide a road map to success in court for victims in other mass shootings, despite a variety of laws in other states, including Florida, that offer even greater immunity to gunmakers.
“All assault rifles do is to put us all at risk”.
“The AR-15 was engineered to deliver maximum carnage with extreme efficiency”, Joshua Koskoff of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder argues in court filings. “That exists whether or not it’s lawful”.
The suit also argues that Bushmaster’s manufacturer intentionally used military language in its marketing to appeal to people eager to acquire a weapon capable of mass murder.
Both sides are due back in court July 28.
“So many emotions went through me”, Soto said.
“As I heard the news about Orlando [I felt] sadness, grief, disgust…”
A week after another gunman used a similar high-capacity military-style rifle to kill 49 in an Orlando club, Georgetown law professor Heidi Feldman says the stakes are high in this case. “No one should have to sit and wait for 6 hours to see if their loved one is alive or dead”.
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Koskoff agreed that banning the weapons was a legislative issue, but he said that a guilty verdict in this case would force firearms manufacturers to decide if it’s worth continuing to sell the product if they could face further legal consequences after other shootings.
