Remington Arms settles Sandy Hook lawsuit for $73 million

Remington may not have pulled the trigger, but they gave Lanza the gun

Katherine Ely / Asst. Opinion Editor / The USD Vista

The debate around gun control is one this country has grappled with for many decades. The topic has divided the population — many believe the U.S. should enforce stricter laws surrounding gun ownership, while others in opposition believe we should keep them as is.

Remington Arms, the gun manufacturer for the weapon used in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, revolutionized the legal world and the firearms industry on Feb. 15, 2022, when they reached a settlement with the families of victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting.

In 2012, 20 year old Adam Lanza entered the elementary school and killed 20 students and six adults with an AR-15 as his main weapon. It was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.  

This landmark settlement is the first time in legislative or legal history that a gun manufacturer was held accountable in the U.S. for their role in a mass shooting.

The lawsuit concluded with the nine families receiving $73 million total. Although that is a lot of money, I believe it does not compensate for the 26 lives that were lost on that fateful day. What makes it even worse is that Remington Arms initially hoped to settle for $33 million, a price they believed would provide satisfaction to the families. But how much solace did the extra $40 million provide in the end? There is no amount of money in the world that can bring these families the peace they deserve.

Furthermore it has taken nearly a decade since the tragedy at Sandy Hook for Remington to settle. According to the Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, a database for federal court cases, the families filed lawsuits against Bushmaster Firearms (a subsidiary of Remington Outdoor), the distributor, Camfour Inc., and the East Windsor gun shop that sold the assault rifle in 2015. The families’ primary argument was that these companies violated Connecticut law against deceptive marketing practices by selling and advertising military-style weapons to civilians, specifically young, unstable males.

The families alleged that this advertising and targeting was negligent and therefore the companies should be held liable for the lives lost in the Sandy Hook shooting. Remington denied the accusations. For years, Remington, like most gun manufacturers involved in lawsuits, used the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act as a basis for arguing that they cannot be held liable for harm caused solely by the criminal misuse of a weapon.

In other words, Remington is not the one who committed the crime and therefore should not be at fault for an individual’s actions.

I think this argument is absurd. I think it helps to compare this case to the Kinder egg instance from a few years ago to see what a company should do when a product they are selling is proven to be harmful. The company, Kinder, produced a chocolate egg with toys inside. After it began selling, children consuming the product started choking on the candies, proving to be hazardous. Kinder then discontinued the product because they knew it was harmful.

But we are not talking about selling chocolate eggs here. We’re talking about selling dangerous weapons of war to the American masses. In the United States, it is nearly impossible at this point in time to suggest that gun companies should stop selling all guns entirely given its deep rooted culture of civilians having the right to own guns. But when you have a product that is proving to be extremely dangerous, like AK-47s and AR-15s, then you shouldn’t be selling them. Or, at the very least, you should accept responsibility for the harm being caused as a result of selling your product.

Despite the tragic origin story for this lawsuit, I will say there is some good that came out of the settlement. Most notably, it will be a major setback for the firearms industry. In an unprecedented way, plaintiffs in the case were able to successfully challenge the law protecting gun companies from liability by arguing that the misuse of marketing for weapons violates Connecticut consumer law. Remington is being held accountable for their marketing strategies, which advertised assault weapons to young people in return for its own profitable interests.

I think that a lot of the attraction behind owning a gun is that it gives a person more power or it makes them feel more masculine and in control. Gun manufacturers and companies often utilize this rhetoric and messaging in their advertising strategies. This marketing tactic is extremely dangerous because it often targets a naive, young, and irresponsible consumer audience that buys machine guns because they think it is cool. While Remington may not have pulled the trigger at Sandy Hook, they handed Adam Lanza the gun.

I feel this case is a great step toward enacting stricter gun laws or at the very least encouraging the courts to hold gun companies accountable, but I do not think it is a solution. This settlement won’t stop another school shooting from occurring, and it won’t change the environment we live in and the culture that tells people that it’s okay to own a weapon of war. It doesn’t change the world we live in where students, as well as the general public, fear that their safety could be compromised any time they step foot inside a school. The only way to enact that change is to enforce stricter gun laws in this country.

I remember when Sandy Hook happened. It was about two months into the school year when my sixth grade teacher had to sit 35 eleven-year-olds down to tell them a school just like ours, only two states away, had faced a terrible tragedy. He couldn’t tell us “don’t worry, it won’t happen to us” because it could.

That’s why the families who lost their children spent nearly a decade advocating for themselves, fighting for legislative change, and pushing this legal battle, all for the right to hold gun companies accountable for the part they play in this epidemic of violence.

These families hoped the lawsuit would force gun manufacturers and insurance companies to reconsider their position and take steps to improve the general public’s safety. Though the lawsuit against Remington Arms is one step forward, only time will tell if other gun companies in the future will follow suit.