A gun manufacturer was just held liable for a mass shooting for the first time in the U.S.

Sandy Hook Families Win $73 Million In Lawsuit Against Remington Arms

Remington Arms has agreed to settle liability claims from nine families whose loved ones were killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.

The settlement agreement, announced Tuesday in a court filing, is the first time in the U.S. that a gun manufacturer has been held liable for a mass shooting.

The family members of five children and four adults killed in the shooting won $73 million in the settlement, attorneys for the families told HuffPost in a statement. Last July, Remington offered to pay $33 million to settle the lawsuit, which the families declined.

Remington created the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle that Adam Lanza used in the 2012 shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, which left 20 children and six adults dead.

“These nine families have shared a single goal from the very beginning: to do whatever they could to help prevent the next Sandy Hook. It is hard to imagine an outcome that better accomplishes that goal,” Josh Koskoff, the lead attorney representing the families, said in a statement.

In 2019, the Connecticut Supreme Court allowed a lawsuit filed by relatives of nine victims killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School to move forward. The lawsuit argued that Remington should not have sold such a dangerous weapon to the public, and that the gunmaker specifically targeted younger, at-risk males in its marketing and product placement.

“For the gun industry, it’s time to stop recklessly marketing all guns to all people for all uses and instead ask how marketing can lower risk rather than court it,” Koskoff said in a statement. “For the insurance and banking industries, it’s time to recognize the financial cost of underwriting companies that elevate profit by escalating risk. Our hope is that this victory will be the first boulder in the avalanche that forces that change.”

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