Don’t let Gun Lobby Republicans hide behind Sandy Hook settlement. Demand gun safety reform now!

Democracy Labs

4 years ago

Don’t let Gun Lobby Republicans hide behind Sandy Hook settlement. Demand gun safety reform now!

Sandy Hook families settle with Remington over school massacre.

Gun lobby political donations buys Republican obstruction to common sense gun safety measures while mass shootings surge. Follow the blood money trail with this relationship map:

Details of the Sandy Hook settlement
Map of the carnage from 647 mass shootings in 2021
How Remington marketed the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle
National Rifle Association (NRA) donations to the Republican party
Republicans behind ‘Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act‘ to protect the gun industry

Gun Lobby Republicans

Sandy Hook settlement

“The families of nine Sandy Hook school shooting victims settled a lawsuit for $73 million on Tuesday against the maker of the AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre, in what is believed to be the largest payout by a gun manufacturer in a mass shooting case. The agreement is a significant setback to the firearms industry because the lawsuit worked around the federal law protecting gun companies from litigation by arguing that the manufacturer’s marketing of the weapon had violated Connecticut consumer law. The families argued that Remington, the gunmaker, promoted sales of the weapon that appealed to troubled men like the killer who stormed into Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012, killing 20 first graders and six adults. The lawsuit was filed by relatives of five of the children and four of the adults.” – NY Times

Needed: Common sense gun safety measures

According to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that tracks shootings in the US, there have been 108 mass shootings this year. There have been on average more than one mass shooting each day. The FBI defines a mass shooting as a single attack in a public place in which four or more victims were killed.

Republicans just don’t care. “So as we’ve returned to our endless, repetitive cycle of mass shootings — the tip of the gun violence iceberg, the bulk of which is the day-to-day body count produced by men (almost always men) using their guns to kill — it’s time we force our elected Republicans to admit something: They just don’t care. It’s not that they want mass shootings, of course (though their allies in the gun industry stand to benefit from them, since mass shootings produce a surge in sales). It just isn’t a problem they think is significant enough to address with any kind of policy initiative.” – Paul Waldman, Washington Post op-ed columnist.

Mass shootings are killing America

Republicans block gun safety reforms

The gun lobby, led by the National Rifle Association and congressional Republicans, enacted the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act in 2005, providing a potent legal shield to gun manufacturers and dealers. When President George W. Bush signed the legislation, he praised it as a necessary safeguard to “stem frivolous lawsuits.” One of the biggest previous settlements had come a year earlier, in 2004, when Bushmaster and a weapons dealer agreed to pay $2.5 million to the families of people killed in sniper attacks in 2001 in Washington, Maryland and Virginia, after they were sued by the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, a leading gun control group.

But the task has become much more difficult since the passage of the liability shield, which one top gun industry executive called the “only reason we have a firearms industry anymore.” In recent years, lawyers for anti-violence groups have increasingly turned to state-level laws to try to make their cases.” – NY Times