arms maker to pay millions to victims of mass murder, first

According to their lawyers, this is the first time that a weapons manufacturer has been held responsible for a shooting in the United States. “The agreement is for $73 million,” family lawyer Joshua Koskoff told a press conference. “It’s all that was left” after the bankruptcy of the Remington group.

The families had sued the gunsmith and its subsidiary Bushmaster, claiming it had knowingly sold a version of the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle, a military-style weapon “not at all suitable” for use. civil.

“This is the beginning of the necessary process of holding arms manufacturers responsible for the manufacture of weapons of war” and their “irresponsible marketing”, underlined US President Joe Biden, welcoming “a historic agreement” .

Established in 1816 and considered the nation’s oldest gunsmith, Remington denied the charges and did not immediately respond to the announcement. On December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza used his Bushmaster XM15-E2S to kill 26 people, including 20 children and six adults, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. The 20-year-old shooter who committed suicide had previously killed his mother at her home.

The AR-15, a weapon of mass murder

The massacre had stunned America and provoked yet another debate on the acquisition and possession of weapons in a country where the right to possess them is guaranteed by the Constitution. AR-15 type rifles have also been used in other shootings, such as in Las Vegas in 2017 (58 dead) or in Parkland, Florida (17 dead) in 2018. In 2021, the firearms killed nearly 45 000 deaths in the United States, including approximately 24,000 suicides, according to the organization Gun Violence Archive.

The Giffords association, which campaigns for tougher gun laws, also hailed on Twitter “a historic victory” for families, which sounds like “a warning to the arms industry”. “Finally, a gunmaker is being held accountable for the gun violence crisis in this country,” said Newtown Action Alliance, another small arms control group.

Matthew Soto, whose sister Victoria was one of the teachers killed at Sandy Hook, said he made a “horrible” discovery while studying the Remington documents. “Weapons manufacturers knew they were advertising a dangerous product and they were exploiting those dangers,” he said.

“Forcing change”

“When the military is looking for the best, deadliest, most destructive weapon and the one that could be used by our soldiers if they were to kill the enemies of our country, they would choose the AR-15,” the lawyer explained. Joshua Koskoff.

This weapon “was not used by a trained soldier, but by a very disturbed young person, not on a battlefield but in an elementary school, not to protect freedom but to kill it”, he added . According to the lawyer, the families did not bring these lawsuits to be compensated financially, but “to force a change” on the arms manufacturers.

This agreement “does not mean the end of the personal weapons industry (which) will always be part of our culture”, asserted Mr. Koskoff, but it shows that “the immunity of this industry is not bulletproof”.

Since 2005, a law has protected manufacturers from most legal actions seeking to engage their responsibility in a violent act committed with one of their weapons. But there are exceptions, in particular for negligence of the seller, on which the families intended to play.

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