Families of 2012 Connecticut shooting victims sue gunmaker

A memento for Josephine Gay, one of 20 students killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary...
A memento for Josephine Gay, one of 20 students killed in the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School, states 'hugs' as it hangs amid others from a tree in Newtown, Connecticut. Photo by Reuters.
The families of nine people killed in an attack on a Newtown, Connecticut, elementary school in 2012 filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against the company that manufactured the gun used in the attack.

The suit named gunmaker Bushmaster, a distributor and the local retailer that sold the weapon used by 20-year-old Adam Lanza to kill 20 first-graders and six educators in a Dec. 14, 2012, attack at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

The lawsuit contends that the AR-15 rifle Lanza used in his attack was designed to be a military weapon, had "little utility" for civil purposes and thus should not have been in Lanza's hands.

"There is one tragically predictable civilian activity in which the AR-15 reigns supreme: Mass shootings," the lawsuit said.

Families of nine victims and a 10th person who was wounded filed the suit in Connecticut Superior Court in Bridgeport. The suit seeks unspecified monetary damages.

Bushmaster did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lanza, who began the shooting spree by killing his mother at their home, ended his rampage by turning his gun on himself as he heard police approaching. 

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