Taking stand against NRA, lethal weaponry
Americans who would like to see some sanity and common sense represented in our gun laws – and that’s the majority, if polls are any indication – have every reason to despair about either arriving anytime soon.
Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, but particularly on the Republican side, reflexively bow to demands by the National Rifle Association, which lately has been peddling the notion that the way to cut down on gun violence is not to reduce the number of guns on our streets, but to arm everyone to the teeth. Think of it as being like mutually assured destruction, which has guided our nuclear weapons policy for the last 60 years or so.
But the acronym for mutually assured destruction is MAD, and most reasonable people recognize that it is madness to have a society where everyone is packing heat or carrying weapons that belong on the battlefield, not in our homes, schools, places of business, commerce or recreation.
Clearly aware that no legislative remedy will be happening anytime soon, the families of nine victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in December 2012, along with one survivor, filed suit last month against the manufacturer of the weapon used in the slaughter, along with its distributor and the store that sold the weapon that killed 20 first-grade students and six adults.
As the lawsuit starkly notes, it all happened in a mere 264 seconds.
The suit states the weapon used by the deranged, 20-year-old perpetrator, an AR-15, semi-automatic rifle, “was designed as a military weapon, and it has always excelled on the battlefield. Born out of the exigencies of modern combat, the AR-15 was engineered to deliver maximum carnage with extreme efficiency.”
It goes on to point out that, when used by law-enforcement officials or by the military, the gun is subject to “strict safety measures, including advanced training and regimented storage,” but that it has little use in personal defense.
However, “there is one tragically predictable civilian activity in which the AR-15 reigns supreme: mass shootings …”
The suit contends that the manufacturer, distributor and seller should have known that weapons like the one used at Sandy Hook pose an intolerable risk to people.
In fact, the plaintiffs note that Bushmaster’s promotional and advertising material for the AR-15 is thick with associations of its use by the military, using such phrases as, “Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered.”
It is certainly not out of the question that Bushmaster will seek to settle out of court. They did in 2004, when the families of six of the 10 victims of the Washington, D.C., sniper, along with two survivors, received a $2.5 million settlement from the manufacturer and the gun shop where the sniper purchased his gun.
But no amount of money, of course, can make good the loss that the families of the Sandy Hook victims have suffered. Their loss, and the grief and pain they no doubt still experience every minute of every day, is beyond calculation. The plaintiffs are more likely hoping that lawsuits like this one will make manufacturers and gun sellers think twice about putting weapons on the market that are so brutally effective in exacting a horrifying death toll. Let’s hope they prevail.