The families of victims from the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting were back in court on Monday. “Congress shielded gun-makers from most lawsuits except when a gun is sold negligently to someone who is a high risk, ” stated anchor Scott Pelley, “Well, the parents argue that the AR-15 assault rifle is so inherently risky that selling it to anyone is negligent.
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A CT judge is hearing arguments on whether to dismiss a lawsuitagainst the maker of the semiautomatic rifle used to kill 20 children and six adults in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre; a weapon similar to the one used this month in the shooting at a Florida nightclub.
The families say Bushmaster Firearms, a gun manufacturer owned by Remington, advertised its AR-15 rifle as an effective killing, a concept that appealed to the deranged killer who used the rifle to gun down 20 first graders and six educators.
The plaintiffs have argued that the rifle – a modified version of a gun used by the military in Vietnam – should never have been marketed and sold to civilians.
But the plaintiffs in the Sandy Hook case believe that they are not precluded from filing their case in state court, and Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara N. Bellis has allowed preliminary steps to proceed.
Bushmaster, as well as the wholesaler and retailer involved in the sale of the Sandy Hook gun, said the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act exempted it from lawsuits for having legally sold the gun to Nancy Lanza in 2010.
At Monday’s hearing, Koskoff referred to legislators as “sheep” who lack sufficient knowledge about semiautomatic weapons that can be deadlier than fully automatic weapons banned in the U.S.
“The theory of negligent entrustment”, Georgetown University Law Center professor Heidi Li Feldman said in an interview with CBC’s Day 6 radio program, “boils down to carelessly putting a unsafe instrument into the hands of someone likely to use it dangerously”.
Remington attorney James Vogt told Bellis, “a personal injury case before a jury isn’t the place to debate gun laws”.
“It was Remington’s choice to entrust the most notorious American killing machine to the public”, said the families’ attorney Joshua Koskoff, who rejected Vogts’ claim that the lawsuit amounted to an attempt to ban assault weapons. “No one should ever be put in that position”, said Matthew Soto, whose sister Victoria Soto was a Sandy Hook teacher. The question of whether the AR-15 should be sold to the public should be dealt with by legislators rather than juries, he said.
“Because our country can not come together on the issues of assault rifles, these mass shootings will continue to happen”, he said.
“Whether it be someone renting a vehicle, loaning a boat to someone, or selling a firearm who is there with the person at the counter and has the ability to asses what that person is all about, what that person says, the ability to ask questions”.
Koskoff called the AR-15 the “gold standard military assault rifle”, and yet, he said, “There it was on the floor of a first-grade classroom” used by someone whose only resemblance to a soldier was that “he dressed like one”. “Do we go back to the auto dealership and eventually go to Ford Motor Company and say ‘well its Negligently Entrusted?’ We don’t see that, your honor”, said Peter Berry, attorney for Riverview Gun Sales. She has 120 days to rule on whether to throw the case out.
Right now, a trial date is set for April of 2018.
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Attorney Katherine Whitney said Remington will challenge that assertion, based on the argument that the company isn’t a seller of guns.
