In Idiot America lunatics can buy any weapon they want, thanks to the 2nd amendment of our Bill of Rights: Constitution of United States of America 1789 - A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

In Idiot America we are used to the never ending gun violence in this country. But this one was a bit difficult to ignore.

On December 14, 2012 a fucktard walked into a school and murdered 20 children. Usually this is not a big deal but these children were only 6 years old. I remember reading about a little girl who was covered with blood. She ran to her mother who asked her "Are you OK". "I'm OK Mommy but all my friends are dead." She lived because she pretended she was dead.

This is from today's New York Times:

In the lawsuit, the families seized upon the marketing for the AR-15-style Bushmaster used in the 2012 attack, which invoked the violence of combat and used slogans like “Consider your man card reissued.”

Such messages reflected, according to the lawsuit, a deliberate effort to appeal to troubled young men like Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who charged into the elementary school and killed 26 people, including 20 first graders, in a spray of gunfire. The attack traumatized the nation and made Newtown, Conn., the small town where it happened, a rallying point in the broader debate over gun violence.

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Wikipedia - Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting

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This is the whole thing from the New York Times.

Sandy Hook Massacre: Gun Makers Lose Major Ruling Over Liability

By Rick Rojas and Kristin Hussey
March 14, 2019

The Connecticut Supreme Court dealt a major blow to the firearms industry on Thursday, clearing the way for a lawsuit against the companies that manufactured and sold the semiautomatic rifle used by the gunman in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The lawsuit mounted a direct challenge to the immunity that Congress granted to gun companies to shield them from litigation when their weapons are used in a crime. The ruling allows the case, brought by victims’ families, to maneuver around the federal shield, creating an opening for them to potentially bring their claims to trial and hold the companies, including Remington, the gun maker, liable for the attack.

The decision represents a significant development in the long-running battle between gun control advocates and the gun lobby. And it stands to have wider ramifications, experts said, by charting a possible legal road map for victims’ relatives and survivors from other mass shootings who want to sue gun companies.

In the lawsuit, the families seized upon the marketing for the AR-15-style Bushmaster used in the 2012 attack, which invoked the violence of combat and used slogans like “Consider your man card reissued.”

Lawyers for the families argued that those messages reflected a deliberate effort to appeal to troubled young men like Adam Lanza, the 20-year-old who charged into the elementary school and killed 26 people, including 20 first graders, in a spray of gunfire. The attack traumatized the nation and made Newtown, Conn., the small town where it happened, a rallying point in the broader debate over gun violence.

In the 4-3 ruling, the justices agreed with a lower court judge’s decision to dismiss most of the claims raised by the families, but also found that the sweeping federal protections did not prevent the families from bringing a lawsuit based on wrongful marketing claims. The court ruled that the case can move ahead based on a state law regarding unfair trade practices.

In the majority opinion, the justices wrote that “it falls to a jury to decide whether the promotional schemes alleged in the present case rise to the level of illegal trade practices and whether fault for the tragedy can be laid at their feet.”

The families hailed the ruling as a victory. “I am thrilled and tremendously grateful,” said Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan died in his first-grade classroom. “No one has blanket immunity. There are consequences. We want our day in court to see why they do this this way, and what needs to change.”

Lawyers for Remington, as well as other companies named in the suit, did not immediately respond to request for comments.

The families faced long odds as they pursued a novel strategy to find a route around the federal protections, and they will confront major hurdles as the case proceeds. Their hope was to bring the case to trial, which could force gun companies to turn over internal communications that they have fiercely fought to keep private and provide a revealing and possibly damaging glimpse into how the industry operates.

Nora Freeman Engstrom, a law professor at Stanford University and an author of an amicus brief signed by law professors in this case, said that the ruling showed that the federal protections were “not impenetrable.”

“This is not the end,” she said, adding, “Any path for plaintiffs will be long and strewn with obstacles. But this opinion suggests there may well be a road, which before was unclear.”

The high stakes posed by the case stirred a vigorous response from both sides that only intensified after recurring episodes of deadly mass violence that followed the Newtown attack.

Among those who lobbied in support of the lawsuit were gun violence prevention groups, emergency doctors who have treated patients wounded by assault rifle fire and a statewide association of school superintendents. Many gun-rights groups also raised concerns, including the National Rifle Association, which contended in its brief that allowing the case to move ahead stood to “eviscerate” the gun companies’ legal protections.

The ruling comes as yet another twist in the lawsuit’s circuitous path through the court system, one that continued far longer than many, including legal experts and the families, had initially expected. “This decision was a long time in coming but it was more than worth the wait,” said Joshua D. Koskoff, a lawyer for the families.

“These families were not going to go away,” he added, “no matter how long it took.”

The ruling had been delayed after Remington, one of the nation’s oldest gun makers, filed for bankruptcy last year as its sales declined and debts mounted.

The lawsuit, brought by family members of nine people who were killed and a teacher who was shot and survived, was originally filed in 2014, then moved to federal court, where a judge ordered that it be returned to the state level.

The families were given a glimmer of hope when a State Superior Court judge, Barbara N. Bellis, permitted the case to approach a trial before she ultimately dismissed it. She found that the claims fell “squarely within the broad immunity” provided by federal law.

In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which restricts lawsuits against gun sellers and makers by granting industrywide immunity from blame when one of their products is used in a crime. Lawmakers behind the measure cited a need to foil what they described as predatory and politically driven litigation.

The law does allow exceptions for sale and marketing practices that violate state or federal laws and instances of so-called negligent entrustment, in which a gun is carelessly given or sold to a person posing a high risk of misusing it. In the lawsuit, the families pushed to broaden the scope to include the manufacturer, Remington, which was named along with a wholesaler and a local retailer in the suit.

The lawsuit said that the companies were wrong to entrust an untrained civilian public with a weapon designed for maximizing fatalities on the battlefield. Lawyers pointed out advertising — with messages of combat dominance and hyper-masculinity — that resonated with disturbed young men who could be induced to use the weapon to commit violence.

“Remington may never have known Adam Lanza, but they had been courting him for years,” Mr. Koskoff, one of the lawyers representing the families, told the panel of judges during oral arguments in the case in 2017. The weapon used by Mr. Lanza had been legally purchased by his mother, Nancy Lanza, whom he also killed.

Lawyers representing the gun companies argued that the claims raised in the lawsuit were specifically the kind that law inoculated them against. In oral arguments, lawyers for the companies argued that the weapons were marketed as being used for home defense and target practice, and not to commit violence.

They said that agreeing with the families’ arguments would require amending the law or ignoring how it had been applied in the past.

James B. Vogts, a lawyer for Remington, said in court that the shooting “was a tragedy that cannot be forgotten.”

“But no matter how tragic,” he added, “no matter how much we wish those children and their teachers were not lost and those damages not suffered, the law needs to be applied dispassionately.”