On Tuesday, just hours after a gunman entered a classroom in Uwalde, Texas, and killed 19 students and two teachers, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut (home of Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown) spoke passionately about the Senate floor: ” Why? Why are we here, if not, to try to make sure that fewer schools and fewer communities go through what Sandy Hook went through, what Uwalde is going through? … I’m here on this floor to pray – literally get on your hands and knees and ask my colleagues: Find your way forward here. “
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, meanwhile, said: “The policies that Democrats are proposing, they would not stop this crime or others. They are not focused on stopping crime. Their decision is to try to seize firearms. “
In 2013, four months after the Sandy Hook shooting, Francine Wheeler and her husband, David, made a passionate request: “Please help us do something before our tragedy becomes your tragedy. Sometimes I close my eyes and all I can remember is that horrible day waiting in the Sandy Hook fire department for the boy who would never return home. “
Correspondent Tracy Smith asked Wheelers, “What were you hoping for at the moment?”
“If I could make people sympathize with me as a parent, then maybe you would vote to check on the past,” Francine said. “So, if you buy a weapon at a gun show and if you buy a weapon online, you will have a check. That’s what we fought for. “
Later that month, those amendments to the gun law were rejected by the Senate because they failed to garner the 60 votes needed to overcome the fraudster.
Wheelers began looking for other ways to make a difference. “We will never stop being Ben’s parents,” David said. “It’s just that our parenting experience is now frozen.”
Their son Ben was six years old when he was killed. “In the small classroom where our son was at school, law enforcement found 80 shell casings. Eighty, ”David said.
Everything from an AR-15 style rifle. Total: 154 laps in less than five minutes.
David said, “If I had been told when Ben was born that I would only be six years old with him, would I have done it? Absolutely, absolutely, indisputably, yes. But what happens next is part of his legacy, right? What can we do to make sure that no other mother or father will ever go through this? “
What the Wheelers and eight other Sandy Hook families did seemed impossible at first. They sued arms maker Remington Arms and settled the $ 73 million lawsuit in February. This is the largest payment by the arms company to the victims of mass shootings.
Earlier this month, the family of Andre McNeill, who was killed in the May 14 shooting in Buffalo, announced that they would also sue Remington Arms, which made the gun used in the Tops supermarket.
One of their lawyer’s first calls was to Josh Coscoff, who represented the Sandy Hook families.
Smith asked Coscoff, “How much do you know about the weapons involved in this case?”
“If there was something like less than zero, I would say it,” he replied. “Nothing about guns, nothing about gun laws.”
Koskov said he approached the case like a puzzle. First, he researched everything he could about the AR-15 rifle. “This is the weapon that the United States military considers the most effective, efficient and deadly weapon for its soldiers,” he said.
The AR-15 was developed by Armalite as a military rifle in the 1950s. (AR, commonly thought of as “assault rifle”, actually means “Armalite rifle”.)
In the early 1960s, the Ministry of Defense tested weapons on the spot. Koskov showed Smith the results: “This is not for the faint of heart, but it is important to know that this is not an ordinary firearm. “A wound in the back caused an explosion in the chest cavity.” “A wound in the stomach caused an explosion in the abdominal cavity.” “The wound in the chest, from right to left, destroyed the chest cavity.”
A semi-automatic version for civilians was made in the late 1960s. And at the time of the Sandy Hook massacre, Remington Arms and their Bushmaster brand had the most popular AR-15 rifles on the market.
Koskov said: “Until 2005, they sold about 100,000 units a year. By 2012, the year of the shooting, they were up to 2.1 million. And the weapons themselves have not changed. So what has changed? Marketing.”
There was another change that could encourage arms manufacturers, a little-talked-about law passed in 2005. Known as the PLCAA (Law on the Protection of the Legal Trade in Arms), it is a way to protect arms companies from liability for shooting. “This basically eliminates common law rights that people would otherwise have to sue in the automotive, tobacco or pharmaceutical industries,” Koskov said.
But the law contains several exceptions, including one that allows Coscoff to monitor the way the gun is sold. “Until our case, I think people thought it was a perfect immunity that could never be overcome,” he said. “But they were into marketing that everyone would say was beyond pale – immoral, unethical.”
Remington Arms / Bushmaster
Koskov said Remington doesn’t just target ads like these to lonely young men; they emphasized the pistol’s ability to inflict mass casualties.
Remington Arms / Bushmaster
Another ad reads: “Opposition forces, bow down. You are superior alone.”
Remington Arms / Bushmaster
Koskov said: “There is no harm in forcing your opposition forces to ‘bow down’ in our neighborhoods and cities. That’s an attack, period. “
According to Koskoff, the key to the case is linking Remington’s marketing to the 20-year-old shooter at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
Smith said: “He did not go to buy the gun; his mother bought the gun and then just left it unlocked.
“Well, that’s the way marketing works,” Koskov said. “Marketing is not aimed at the buyer, they are aimed at the end user. There is no better example of this than Disney. Disney does not offer us its products. They offer it to our children.
“They did not aggressively sell their weapons to a housewife from the suburbs; they were aggressively selling weapons of war to her troubled son. ”
Shooter Sandy Hook was a frequent player in the video game “Call of Duty”. Koskov had played the game with his own son and saw something familiar in a photo from the crime scene: two cartridges with 30 rounds glued together. From Call of Duty, Koskoff knew what his goal was: “When you played the game, it allowed almost zero downtime to quote / undo quotes from change lists.”
So you shoot 30 shots, you turn it over? Smith asked.
“You can kill 60 people with this instead of 30, almost without delay.”
The taped magazines found at the site of the Sandy Hook shooting were similar to the taped magazines included in Call of Duty, the video game that licensed Remington’s Bushmaster ACR for use. CBS News
The simulated weapon in “Call of Duty” was Remington’s Bushmaster ACR (Adaptive Combat Rifle). Koskov said Remington Arms licensed the AR-15-style pistol for the video game. This was part of the arms company’s marketing plan.
“This allowed children and teenagers to experience what it’s like to use a combat weapon,” he said. “You can feel the vibrations of the controller. Before that, to find out how a weapon actually worked or felt, you had to go to the weapons range. And no arms dealer will make a child come in and test an AR-15. But they don’t have to anymore. “
“So a child can sit on the couch and feel what it’s like to shoot an AR-15?” Smith asked.
“There are kids right now sitting on the couch doing just that.”
Like many parents, David and Francine Wheeler had seen nothing of Remington’s marketing to date. “I thought you should be kidding,” Francine said.
David said, “I was horrified. Unbelievable. My first thought was, “Do you think this is a game?” My son is gone. “
Josh Koskoff said $ 73 million of the agreement would be distributed among the plaintiffs’ nine families. Remington’s internal remarks, also transferred to the agreement, will be made public.
Smith asked, “What will these documents show?”
He replied, “It will just teach us a lesson we have all learned, namely that greed kills.”
He said the case was for corporate violations, not politics: “This company just crossed the line. And it puts us all at risk. The Sandy Hook shooter did not rank children of gun owners and children of gun owners or Democrats and Republicans; he shot everyone. “
The arms industry says Remington’s suit is unusual because it was arranged after Remington went bankrupt. In a statement, the National Sports Shooting Foundation, an association that trades in firearms, said: “This agreement, organized by insurance companies, has no impact on the strength and efficiency of the PLCAA, which remains the law of the land. The PLCAA will continue to unjustifiably block lawsuits seeking to accuse legitimate industrial companies of third-party criminal activity. “
Francine and David Wheeler have always said they want to save other families from what they have. The events of recent weeks show that their trial has not stopped the mass shootings. But, they say, this is the beginning.
“We hope this will make a difference in the future,” Francine said. “I have hope. I always have. I have never lost hope. Otherwise I would probably never leave my bed.”
“And you still hope?” Smith …
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