Remington Arms to pay $73 million to nine Sandy Hook families
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[February 16, 2022]
By Tom Hals and Brendan O'Brien
(Reuters) - Remington Arms will pay $73
million to the families of five children and four adults killed in the
Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the families said on Tuesday,
marking the first time a gunmaker has agreed to a major settlement over
a mass shooting in the United States.
Twenty students and six adults were killed on Dec. 14, 2012, in Newtown,
Connecticut, by gunman Adam Lanza, who used a Remington Bushmaster AR-15
rifle to shoot his way into the Sandy Hook Elementary School after
killing his mother at home.
Remington Arms will pay $73 million to the families and release all the
discovery and disposition material to the public. The settlement will be
paid through insurance policies, lawyers for the families said in a
statement.
"Today marks an inflection point when our duty of care to our children
as a society finally supersedes the bottom line of an industry that made
such an atrocity like Sandy Hook possible," said Veronique De La Rosa,
whose son Noah was killed in the shooting, during a news conference.
Attorneys for Remington Arms did not respond to a request for comment.
The nine families sued in 2014 and spent years in the courts trying to
hold Remington liable, despite a U.S. law that protects gunmakers and
dealers from most civil litigation and two bankruptcy filings by
Remington.
The Sandy Hook families found a way around that legal protection for
gunmakers by claiming that Remington's marketing of firearms contributed
to the massacre.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/16/images/ads/current/graue_sda_042021.png)
"These families would do everything to give it all back for just one
more minute. That would be true justice," said Josh Koskoff, an attorney
for the families.
Koskoff said the case focused on the marketing of the gun, the AR-15,
which was originally made for combat and for decades only appealed to
small civilian market.
After the Cerberus private equity firm bought Remington in 2007, it
launched aggressive campaign that pushed sales of AR-15s through product
placement in first-person shooter videogames and by touting the AR-15 as
an effective killing machine, Koskoff said.
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![](../images/021622pics/news_f9.jpg)
The sign for the new Sandy Hook Elementary School at the end of the
drive leading to the school is pictured in Newtown, Connecticut,
U.S. July 29, 2016. The officials unveiled the newly constructed
school, built to replace the building torn down after a gunman shot
dead 20 young children and six educators in a 2012 massacre.
REUTERS/Michelle McLoughlin/File Photo
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/16/images/ads/current/2021_lda_Businessdirectory.png) Sales rose from 100,000 AR-15 in
2005 to 2 million in 2012, Koskoff added.
MASS SHOOTINGS CONTINUE
The settlement with Remington comes as the United States continues
to be marred by mass shootings and gun violence.
A government-funded research project released in February found that
of all the mass shootings that took place between 1966 and 2019,
more than half took place since 2000, with 20% of them occurring
between 2010 and 2019.
Gun control advocates have been encouraged by the Sandy Hook legal
strategy, including New Jersey's attorney general, who is
investigating Smith & Wesson's marketing.
Mexico filed a U.S. lawsuit last year seeking $10 billion from
several gunmakers, accusing them of marketing their weapons to the
country's gangs.
New York last year enacted a law that allows firearm sellers,
manufacturers and distributors to be sued for creating a "public
nuisance" that endangers the public's safety and health. Gun
manufacturers have challenged the law in court.
Gun advocacy groups have also been using the courts and state
legislatures to expand gun rights and have scored victories at the
Supreme Court in 2008 and 2010 that established an individual's
right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.
(This story officially corrects to show the case was on behalf of
five children and four adults after an initial press statement about
the settlement said five adults and four children)
(Reporting by Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by Mark Porter,
Bernadette Baum and Aurora Ellis)
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