Its existence is a reminder that America’s gun culture, though touted as an expression of rugged freedom, relies on special legislative carve-outs. The protections that the law gives to gun manufacturers are extraordinary. One Bushmaster print ad simply showed the gun with the tagline “Consider Your Man Card Reissued.” There was an accompanying online promotion, in which friends could revoke one another’s man cards.īut the biggest hurdle that the lawsuit faced wasn’t finding material to put before a jury it was the P.L.C.A.A. ![]() But he knew that that boy would never be instead, there is a six-year-old “under a granite stone in Newtown cemetery.” And, he said, “one of the reasons Ben’s not here is because some people made a decision, driven by an increased desire for profits and a fear of a shrinking market share, to focus their advertising on young men.” Among the materials that the case brought to light are advertisements for the Bushmaster XM15-E2S-which is akin to the rifle that American soldiers carry-that were placed in violent video games. Today is about what is right and what is wrong.” Benjamin’s father, David, imagined his son at fifteen: tall, “probably lanky, probably skinny,” with brown hair. He will be six forever, because he is gone forever. We honor Ben in many ways.” (For the Wheelers, that includes a charity which, among other things, tries to teach children empathy.) She continued, “True justice would be our fifteen-year-old healthy and standing next to us right now. Francine Wheeler, the mother of one of the murdered first graders, said, “Today’s announcement is not about honoring our son Benjamin. But, with the years, it has also found focus. Listening to the parents at a press conference, on Tuesday, after the settlement was announced, it seemed that their pain is, in many ways, as fierce as ever. Sandy Hook deniers have insisted that the families prove the children were real some parents have been threatened by people who have been persuaded that they are “crisis actors.” (Those fantasies were a factor in another track of litigation involving Alex Jones, a conspiracy peddler.) If the company, or what was left of it, wanted to send a message that litigation hurt, it did. 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. 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. There was also 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. (The amount of insurance coverage was a factor in arriving at the seventy-three-million-dollar figure.) At one point, the company responded to a discovery request by sending files of extraneous material, including cartoons and images of Santa and the “Despicable Me” Minions. ![]() ![]() ![]() 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. That could potentially hurt more than the money. Those documents promise to lay bare the calculations that gun merchants make when they seek out customers for military-style guns. And yet the families have won an extraordinary victory: a settlement that includes a payment of seventy-three million dollars and, perhaps more important, which will make possible the release of internal company documents. You are single-handedly outnumbered.’ ” Until recently, that might as well have been the taunting message from gun manufacturers to anyone trying to hold them to account they had considered themselves all but immune, thanks to a 2005 law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or P.L.C.A.A., which gives the industry special protections against most civil suits. (Before going to the school, he also killed his mother.) And it’s been more than seven years since the day, in December, 2014, when the families of nine of those victims and a survivor filed suit against the gun’s manufacturer, which had advertised the weapon with marketing materials that, according to one of the plaintiffs’ filings, “continued to exploit the fantasy of an all-conquering lone gunman, proclaiming: ‘Forces of opposition, bow down. More than nine years have passed since a young man carrying a Bushmaster XM15-E2S-an AR-15-style rifle-murdered twenty first graders and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut.
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