Feb 24, 2022 4 min read

My wife and I spent last week in Pittsburgh with our 12- and 15-year-old granddaughters. While sitting in the kitchen one evening, our older granddaughter turned to me and said, “Poppa, do you know the kids who were killed at Sandy Hook would have been my age now?” That statement sent a jolt through me.

I had been waiting at the Newark Airport when the Sandy Hook story broke. I remember standing in disbelief as I watched the details of the 20 first-graders and six adults being cut down by a young man carrying a Bushmaster XM15-E2S – an AR-15-style rifle and thinking, “When will enough be enough?” Four of my grandchildren were in grade school at the time, and this attack felt beyond personal to me.

When we heard the perpetrator had murdered his own mother before going to the school that day, it was clear this was an incredibly troubled young man. The question remained as to how he had access to the Bushmaster, and what was it that would drive him to murder such innocent children?

In this area where, short of the Southside of Chicago, there are probably more guns per capita than most anywhere in the United States, this story may not positively resonate with its potential readers, but I’ll attempt to explore the issues as objectively as I can.

In fact, even though recently two teenagers, one of whom possessed similar style ghost weapons as the Sandy Hook perpetrator, were arrested for scoping out a nearby school, the gun ownership challenge continues to be the third rail of both politicians and opinion writers.

Recently in an article by Amy Davidson Sorkin in the New Yorker magazine, she explores the ramifications and the potential impact a lawsuit settlement brought by a group of parents of the first-graders who were gunned down in the Sandy Hook massacre might have on the gun industry.

Prior to this settlement, the manufacturers of these guns had believed themselves to be nearly immune from this type of legal action, due to a 2005 law titled, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

However, according to one of the plaintiffs’ filings, “One of the marketing pieces exposed by the suit continued to exploit the fantasy of an all-conquering lone gunman, proclaiming: ‘Forces of opposition, bow down. You are single-handedly outnumbered.’ Another proclaimed, ‘Consider Your Man Card Reissued.'”

According to Sorkin’s article, “It wasn’t an easy or obvious case. For one thing, after a series of shape-shifting corporate transactions and bankruptcies, the defendant, Remington Arms Co., is essentially a paper entity whose interests in the case are basically in the hands of a group of insurance companies.”

Also, according to the New Yorker article, “There was an attempt, last year, by the Remington lawyers to subpoena the school’s records, including the kindergarten and first-grade report cards of some children who were killed. Supposedly, this was to come up with a figure for the value of their lives and their potential earnings if the case moved to the damages stage. Even putting aside the coldness of such calculations, the subpoena – as the Remington lawyers ought to have known – came in the context of the propagation of wild conspiracy theories that the children might have never existed, and had been invented by shadowy gun-control forces.”

The Sandy Hook families had hoped to simply put fear in the heart of gunmakers regarding their potential liability for inappropriate marketing of these weapons.

However, this spring it is anticipated that the conservative supermajority of the U.S. Supreme Court will issue a ruling that will allow citizens of New York to carry concealed handguns, a decision that is not likely to mean real justice for the children of Sandy Hook.

Will there ever be a compromise as this beat goes on? And will the kids continue to be collateral damage?

Nick Jacobs of Windber is a health-care consultant and author of two books.