HARTFORD, Conn. — The families of nine people killed in the Newtown school massacre filed a lawsuit against the maker and sellers of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the shooting, saying the gun should not have been sold for civilian use because of its overwhelming firepower.
The lawsuit alleging wrongful death and negligence was filed in state court and announced on Monday — the day after the second anniversary of the shooting, which left 20 children and six educators dead and became a rallying point for gun-control efforts.
In addition to Bushmaster, the defendants are Camfour, a firearm distributor, and Riverview Gun Sales, the now-closed East Windsor store where the gunman’s mother purchased the Bushmaster rifle in 2010.
The complaint says the gun allows shooters to inflict “unparalleled civilian carnage.”
“To continue profiting from the sale of AR-15s, defendants chose to disregard the unreasonable risks the rifle posed outside of specialized, highly regulated institutions like the armed forces and law enforcement,” the plaintiffs wrote in the complaint.
The so-called AR-15 rifle was first built by Armalite for military use, but the design was later acquired by Colt, which in the early 1960s began marketing the semi-automatic AR-15 rifle as the civilian version of its fully automatic M-16.
Many other companies have since begun manufacturing and selling AR-15-type rifles.
