Nine families who lost a child or adult plus one teacher who was shot but survived the Sandy Hook massacre of 2012 have filed a complaint lawsuit against the companies that manufactured and sold the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the devastating attack. The complaint faces an uphill battle because of an ill-conceived federal law designed to eliminate accountability against irresponsible companies and dealers who promote and sell guns. The court will have to be both creative and intrepid to allow the claims of the surviving family members even to proceed to trial.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs insist that the companies in this case fall under an exception to the law because they engaged in “negligent entrustment.” The federal law is not going to be a deterrent for the families who need an outlet for their justifiable sorrow and rage. They do not think this type of gun, an assault rifle, used in this shooting should been sold to the public in the first place.

According to the lawsuit: “Time and again, mentally unstable individuals and criminals have acquired an AR-15 with ease, and they have unleashed the rifle’s lethal power on our streets, our malls, our places of worship, and our schools.”

The complaint opens with a reminder of the speed with which the bloodbath unfolded, a lightning fast 264 seconds, a little over four minutes, and twenty-six people were dead, including 20 first grade children. 

Going back 26 years, coincidently the same number as the gunned down youngsters and adults from Sandy Hook, and one-tenth the number of seconds in which the slaughter took place, to 1988, gun-rights activists realized they weren’t getting anywhere by targeting handgun restrictions. However, assault rifles are a different story. They look like the machine guns used by the military. 

These defendants know that “as a result of selling AR-15s to the civilian market, individuals unfit to operate these weapons gain access to them… Despite that knowledge, defendants continue to sell the XM15-E52 rifle to the civilian market.”

In making the case against any civilian sales of AR-15s, the plaintiffs say—among other things—“there is not a single state that requires a mental-health examination of a potential purchaser of an AR-15” or to “answer questions about other individuals with whom they intend to share access.”

The reference is unmistakably to Nancy Lanza, who purchased the AR-15 that her son would use in the massacre before taking his own life. The lawsuit painstakingly details the use of the AR-15 in other mass shootings, including those at schools. Nevertheless Bushmaster continued to market the AR-15 as a weapon that would make others “bow down” and kept selling high-capacity magazines with it.

After recounting the individual lives taken by Lanza and his Bushmaster AR-15, the lawsuit says the defendants “knew, or should have known” that the sale of the AR-15 “posed an unreasonable and egregious risk of physical injury to others.” In addition, it should have known it would have been used in a mass shooting to inflict maximum casualties.

The families with created estates in their children’s names, with parents as administrators so they could sue on behalf of the victims say Bushmaster and the other defendants’ conduct was a “substantial factor resulting in the following injuries and losses.” They are listed for the dead as “terror; ante-mortem pain and suffering; destruction of the ability to enjoy life’s activities; destruction of earning capacity, and death.” The plaintiffs claim damages in excess of $15,000 and seek further relief for monetary damages, punitive damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, and injunctive relief.

Adam Lanza used the Bushmaster to shoot his way through the front glass of the school on Dec. 14, 2012. School Principal Dawn Hochsprung and school psychologist Mary Scherlach immediately confronted him. He killed them both as they ran into the hallway from a meeting room just outside the main office. Natalie Hammond was in that same meeting and was shot several times but managed to crawl back into the room and barricade the door. Hammond is the 10th plaintiff in the lawsuit.

Lanza then entered two first-grade classrooms, where he killed 20 first-graders and four more school personnel, including two teachers, before killing himself with a pistol. Overall, he fired 154 rounds from the Bushmaster in less than five minutes. Scherlach’s husband, Bill, is one of the plaintiffs. In a statement released by a public relations firm, he said the lawsuit is necessary “to ensure that the gun industry is held to the same rules as every other industry.”

“These companies assume no responsibility for marketing and selling a product [to] the general population, who are not trained to use it nor even understand the power of it,” Scherlach said.” I believe in the Second Amendment but I also believe that the gun industry should be brought to bear the same business risk that every other business assumes when it comes to producing, marketing, and selling a product.”

Finally, an author who brings you solutions, instead of problems.

Americans have lost faith in their overreaching federal government. “We the People” don’t need to be overregulated or have their taxes misspent. Americans are victims of a crumbling economy, high prices and stagnant wages. They view government as bloated and politicians as corrupt. They do not trust the leadership at any level. They see politicians of both parties as self-centered narcissists whose only objective is re-election. The author is like you, with one principal difference and 20 reasons for optimism. His “Vision” of America is “clear.” It is a vision of the Constitution and America the way it could be, the way it should be. The author’s eyesight is twenty-twenty.