Remington, the gun manufacturer that designed the rifle used in the devastating Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, reached a settlement with the victims’ families.
The shooter, Adam Lanza, used a Remington rifle to kill 26 victims in Connecticut in 2012.
The now-bankrupt gun maker agreed to pay $73 million to the victims’ families, as well as allow families to release documents they had obtained over the course of their lawsuit showing how the manufacturer marketed the rifle.
“When the Sandy Hook families came to see us, it was about nine years ago, and it was in the aftermath of shattering loss, and they were stunned, and they didn’t know what to do or where to go,” plaintiffs’ attorney Joshua Koskoff said during a Tuesday press conference, per Fox News. “But they…had the energy and drive and motivation to do one thing, and that was to do whatever they could so that other families…would not have to go through the kind of pain and loss that they had.”
Families and one survivor of the shooting sued Remington in 2015 for their role in the school shooting, saying the company should have never sold such a weapon to the public.
“When it came to the military looking for the best weapon, the most lethal weapon, the most destructive weapon, and the weapon that could provide our soldiers, should they be forced to shoot and kill the enemies of our country and our freedom, they chose the AR-15,” Koskoff said. “The greatest military in the world…chose the AR-15.”
He added that the “mainstay” of AR-15 rifles is “still semiautomatic fire, so do not let anybody say it’s not a military weapon because it doesn’t have an automatic stay.”
"The gun has a role here, but there was a chilling part to what we learned about this, and that was about greed. I had thought the case was really about the gun, but it's just as much about greed," Koskoff said, adding that there was only a small market of safe AR-15 owners "for about 40 years" before Remington was "taken over by" private equity firm Cerberus and began to market the gun.
Remington had argued there was no evidence to conclude that its marketing had anything to do with the shooting, and that the lawsuit should have been dismissed because of a federal law that gives broad immunity to the gun industry.
However, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Remington could be sued under state law over its marketing tactic.
