In a settle agreement in which is the first for a firearms company to be liable to a mass shooting, Remington Arms has agreed to settle with the families of five adults and four children killed during the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre that took place in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012.

After killing his mother at home, the shooter, Adam Lanza, proceeded to Sandy Hook Elementary where he shot and killed twenty students and six adults. He then shot himself in the head as first responders started arriving. The firearm used was a Bushmaster XM15-E2S semiautomatic rifle.

The amount that Remington Arms agreed to is US$73 million and the company will also release all the discovery and disposition material to the public.

ABC News reports on the settlement

Despite the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLAA) which President George W. Bush signed into law in 2005, that protects firearms makers and dealers from most civil lawsuits and two bankruptcy filings by Remington, the families sued the company in 2014 to hold it liable for the mass shooting.

What the families and their lawyer, Josh Koskoff, did was find a way around the law by focusing their efforts that the company’s marketing of firearms has contributed to the mass shooting.  The company was bought by Cerberus Consulting in 2007 and conducted an aggressive marketing campaign which led to an increase in sales.

The Connecticut Supreme Court in a ruling in March 2019, allowed the lawsuit to proceed as the PLCAA does not bar legal accountability for “wholly irresponsible conduct such as the wrongful advertising of potentially dangerous products for criminal or illegal purposes” as reported by the Rolling Stone Magazine.

An example of the marketing materials of Remington Arms is “Consider Your Man Card Reissued” as shown in the image above, hyping the Bushmaster XM15-E2S as suitable for combat-style missions, as the court found that, “such use of the XM15-E2S, or any weapon for that matter, would be illegal, and Connecticut law does not permit advertisements that promote or encourage violent, criminal behavior.”

Agreeing to pay the full amount are the company’s four insurers.

Gun control advocates, the firearms community and the manufacturers have been following the case as the approach by the Sandy Hook families may provide a way for victims of shootings to be able to sue the firearms manufactures. With the settlement, it looks like this strategy will be embraced by the gun control advocates. Even the Mexican government filed a suit in the U.S. for US$10 billion from different gun makers such as Smith & Wesson, Barrett, Ruger, Colt, etc. for marketing their weapons to the drug cartels.