In a landmark deal, families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre will be paid $73 million settlement from U.S. gunmaker Remington, the manufacturer of the AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle used in the mass shooting.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs said the settlement marks the first time a gun manufacturer has been held liable for a mass shooting in the United States, which is long traumatized by campus massacres.

Twenty-six children and teachers were shot dead in 2012 at the elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut by Adam Lanza, a 20-year-old with known developmental disabilities. The killings – the second-deadliest school massacre in U.S. history – stunned Americans, with many thinking they would mark a watershed moment that would lead lawmakers to tighten gun control.

A "settlement agreement has been executed between the parties," a notice from lawyers for the families said Tuesday.

Calling the move "historic," U.S. President Joe Biden said it begins "the necessary work of holding gun manufacturers accountable." Manufacturers and dealers must either change their business models or "bear the financial cost of their complicity," he said in a statement.

In his statement Tuesday, Biden called on Congress to repeal the immunity law. Meanwhile, he said he would "continue to urge state and local lawmakers, lawyers, and survivors of gun violence to pursue efforts to replicate the success of the Sandy Hook families."

AR-15 in forefront over marketing, civilian use

Lanza's mother, a gun enthusiast, had bought him an AR-15-style Bushmaster XM15-E2S semi-automatic rifle more than two years before the shooting. Lanza murdered his mother before attacking the school, and killed himself afterward with a handgun as police arrived.

Lanza’s severe and deteriorating mental health problems, his preoccupation with violence and access to his mother’s weapons "proved a recipe for mass murder," according to Connecticut’s child advocate.

The lawsuit alleged that Remington and the other two defendants are culpable because they knowingly marketed a military grade weapon that is "grossly unsuited" for civilian use yet had become the gun most used in mass shootings. An AR-15 was also used to kill 58 people at a mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, and 17 at a school in Parkland, Florida in 2018.

Remington, the oldest gunmaker in the United States, having since filed for bankruptcy for a second time in 2020, denied the allegations. Its assets were later sold off to several companies. The manufacturer was weighed down by lawsuits and retail sales restrictions following the school shooting.

Four insurers for the now-bankrupt company agreed to pay the full amount of coverage available, totaling $73 million, the plaintiffs said.

The plaintiffs alleged that the gun was marketed immorally and unscrupulously and sold on its war-fighting capabilities to civilians. Marketing, they charged, popularized the AR-15 in combat and mass shooting-type situations through the type of violent video games that Lanza was known to play. They specifically cited Remington's marketing of high-capacity magazines, which have only combat utility, for use with the gun.

The gun "was used not by a highly trained soldier but by a deeply troubled kid, not on a battlefield abroad but in an elementary school at home, and not to preserve freedom, but to eviscerate them," Joshua Koskoff, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, told a press conference Tuesday.

Koskoff said the case focused on the marketing of the gun, the AR-15, which was originally made for combat and for decades only appealed to a small civilian market.

After the Cerberus private equity firm bought Remington in 2007, it launched aggressive campaign that pushed sales of AR-15s through product placement in first-person shooter videogames and by touting the AR-15 as an effective killing machine, Koskoff said. Sales rose from 100,000 AR-15 in 2005 to 2 million in 2012, Koskoff added.

Christopher Boehning, another lawyer for the plaintiffs, told Agence France-Presse (AFP) the settlement "sends a strong warning signal to other gun manufacturers regarding their role in these unthinkable tragedies."

Right to life vs. right to bear arms

A government-funded research project released in February found that of all the mass shootings that took place between 1966 and 2019, more than half took place since 2000, with 20% of them occurring between 2010 and 2019.

Gun control advocates have been encouraged by the Sandy Hook legal strategy, including New Jersey's attorney general, who is investigating Smith & Wesson's marketing.

Mexico filed a U.S. lawsuit last year seeking $10 billion from several gunmakers, accusing them of marketing their weapons to the country's gangs.

New York last year enacted a law that allows firearm sellers, manufacturers and distributors to be sued for creating a "public nuisance" that endangers the public's safety and health. Gun manufacturers have challenged the law in court.

Gun advocacy groups have also been using the courts and state legislatures to expand gun rights and have scored victories at the Supreme Court in 2008 and 2010 that established an individual's right to keep a gun at home for self-defense.

The United States leads the world in mass shootings by civilians, with many schools undergoing live shooter drills as a matter of routine.

But the grief and trauma of Lanza's rampage was underscored by the youth of his victims. He killed 20 six- and seven-year-olds along with six staff members. Nearly four years later, the shooting was still so visceral that it moved then-president Barack Obama to tears during a speech on gun control.

Hopes that revulsion ignited by the massacre would finally prompt Congress to follow through on wildly popular demands for greater restrictions on weapons, however, fell flat. Instead, the powerful gun lobby has repeatedly stamped out any efforts to further change the famed Second Amendment to the country's constitution, which allows for the right to bear arms.

But the settlement deal between the Sandy Hook families and Remington could help pave the way for further accountability in such massacres.

The U.S. Congress passed a law in 2005 that explicitly immunized gunmakers when their products are used in crimes. But the Connecticut Supreme Court said that Remington could still be sued on the grounds that its marketing violated Connecticut's unfair trade practice laws. The gun maker appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

"The gun manufacturers knew that they were advertising a dangerous product and they exploited these dangers," Matthew Soto, brother of first grade teacher Vicki Soto, who was among the victims, said at Tuesday's press conference.

Nicole Hockley, the mother of victim Dylan, six, told the press conference that her family had moved from Britain "because of our belief in the American dream."

But that "turned into the American nightmare, where for too many the right to bear arms is a higher priority than the right to life."

Gun rights groups said the settlement will have little effect on rifle sales and gun makers, who continue to be shielded from liability in most cases under federal law. But some experts said it may prompt insurers to pressure gun makers into making some changes.

"We might expect to see increased pressure from insurance companies for gun manufacturers to avoid the kind of either design choices or marketing practices that gave rise to this litigation," Timothy D. Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State University, told the Associated Press (AP).

The settlement is not the first between victims and a gun manufacturer. Families of eight victims of the Washington, D.C.-area snipers won a $2.5 million settlement in 2004, with $550,000 coming from Bushmaster Firearms Inc. and the rest from the gun dealer. But Lytton said the impact of the Sandy Hook settlement could be greater because it is so much higher.

The civil court case in Connecticut focused on how the firearm used by the Newtown shooter was marketed, alleging it targeted younger, at-risk males in advertising and product placement in violent video games. In one of Remington’s ads, it features the rifle against a plain backdrop and the phrase: "Consider Your Man Card Reissued."

As part of the settlement, Remington also agreed to allow the families to release numerous documents they obtained during the lawsuit including ones showing how it marketed the weapon, the families said. It’s not clear when those documents will be released.

Remington had argued there was no evidence to establish that its marketing had anything to do with the shooting. The company also had said the lawsuit should have been dismissed because of the federal law that gives broad immunity to the gun industry.

The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a Newtown-based group that represents gunmakers, said courts should not have allowed the case to proceed and it believes the plaintiffs would have lost at trial. It also said the settlement should have no effect on the The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, the 2005 federal law that shields gun makers from liability.

"The plaintiffs never produced any evidence that Bushmaster advertising had any bearing or influence over Nancy Lanza’s decision to legally purchase a Bushmaster rifle, nor on the decision of murderer Adam Lanza to steal that rifle, kill his mother in her sleep, and go on to commit the rest of his horrendous crimes," the group said in a statement.

Damages from the settlement will be paid only to the families who signed onto the lawsuit, and not other victims’ families. The families have not decided yet what they will be doing with the money from the settlement, said their spokesperson, Andrew Friedman.

"Today is about what is right and what is wrong," said Francine Wheeler, whose 6-year-old son, Ben, was killed in the shooting. "Our legal system has given us some justice today. But ... David and I will never have true justice. True justice would be our 15-year-old healthy and standing next to us right now. But Benny will never be 15. He will be 6 forever because he is gone forever."