Irish Examiner view: Payout is a wake-up call for US gun industry

Remington paid $73m to the families of the 26 victims who died in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012

A photo of Daniel Barden, who was killed in the Sandy Hook shooting, is projected on a screen behind attorney Josh Koskoff during a news conference in Trumbull, Connecticut after the settlement. Picture: Seth Wenig/AP

The US is the only country in the world where civilian guns outnumber people. Americans represent around 5% of the world’s population but have 42% of the world’s privately owned firearms. Various attempts have been made over the years to restrict the number and use of private firearms through legislation and information campaigns but Americans have fought against it.

That may be about to change following a huge payout by gunmaker Remington to the families of children and staff killed in an elementary school massacre 10 years ago.

Many Americans hold as sacrosanct their right to bear arms, as enshrined in their constitution, but critics of the Second Amendment say that right threatens a more fundamental one — the right to life. In Europe, where private firearms are strictly controlled, we are perplexed by this fixation with guns, especially when so many children in the US are shot dead, deliberately or accidentally.

Europeans are perplexed by the fixation with guns in the US, where four of its presidents died of gunshot wounds including JFK, slain in Dallas, Texas on November 22, 1963. File picture

Gun violence statistics across the US are alarming. About 72% of all murders involve the use of guns and, according to the Department of Justice, the US has more than 33,000 gun deaths per year. That is more than 10 times the number of people who were killed in the 9/11 attacks, yet extensive gun ownership and promotion persists. There are 120 firearms per 100 people in the US, with 30% of Americans owning at least one gun.

According to the Pew Research Center, two thirds of gun owners have more than one firearm, while 29% own five or more.

Four US presidents gunned down

It isn’t just civilians who are in danger from private gun ownership. Three handguns and one rifle were the weapons of choice for shooting, injuring, and ultimately killing four US presidents: Abraham Lincoln (1865, by John Wilkes Booth), James A Garfield (1881, by Charles J Guiteau), William McKinley (1901, by Leon Czolgosz), and John F Kennedy (1963, by Lee Harvey Oswald).

Up to now, the right to bear arms has tended to trump the right to life but the tide may be about to turn for America’s gun culture. 

The families of some of the adults and children killed in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, have reached a $73m (€64m) settlement with Remington, the manufacturer of the AR-15 rifle used by 20-year-old Adam Lanza in the massacre. He shot and killed 26 people. Twenty of the victims were children aged six to seven years, and six were adult staff members.

“This victory should serve as a wake-up call not only to the gun industry but also the insurance and banking companies that prop it up,” said the families’ lawyer, Josh Koskoff.

The lawsuit tested the scope of a 2005 federal law that grants firearms manufacturers broad immunity from civil lawsuits arising from crimes committed with their products. But the protection is not total and in 2019 the US Supreme Court allowed the Remington lawsuit to go ahead. While the case is unlikely to stop the manufacture of weapons for private use, it may give gun industry insurers pause for thought if they face more huge payouts like this one.