No, Remington Did NOT Settle with the Sandy Hook Families

February 15, 2022 2:32pm

No, Remington Did NOT Settle with the Sandy Hook Families

As usual, the propaganda press has done a horrible job presenting the facts of today's $73 million blackmail payout to the families of nine people shot at Sandy Hook.

The fake news is reporting that the "gun manufacturer" Remington Arms has settled the lawsuit against it with a massive payout to the families of five children and four adults who were shot during the mass murder at Newtown, Connecticut's Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012. Those families had filed the lawsuit seven years ago claiming that Remington was somehow responsible for the shootings committed by a mentally unstable, still-living-at-his-parent's-home, 20 year-old who killed his mother, stole her gun, and used that gun in the school shooting.

The court of original jurisdiction in Connecticut ruled the case could proceed. Then the Connecticut Superior Court said it could not. The Connecticut Supreme Court later reinstated the lawsuit. The US Supreme Court then shamefully refused to take up an appeal by Remington in November 2019. That allowed the lawsuit to proceed. And sixteen months later, Remington Arms filed Chapter 11 Bankruptcy and went out of business.

But the lawsuit was illegally allowed to proceed with Remington's insurers as defendants. It is those insurance companies, who couldn't care less about the Second Amendment, who made the improper decision to settle with a massive payout to the plaintiffs.

The real outrage over this is not the settlement. It is that the courts allowed the lawsuit to go forward at all. If the courts had followed the law, the case would have been dismissed with prejudice as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act requires. So this is as much about judicial activists ignoring the plain text of the law as it is about unprincipled insurance companies agreeing to a blackmail payout. And it will only encourage more such illegal lawsuits.

Because of those forthcoming lawsuits, the firearms industry will find it either more expensive, or perhaps impossible, to obtain insurance. And without insurance, companies will be unable to operate; and THAT is the goal of the gun banners who so flagrantly disrespect our Second Amendment Rights. That the courts have allowed it is disgraceful.