Connecticut State Police Detective Barbara J. Mattson holds a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, the same type of gun used in the Sandy Hook shooting, during a 2013 hearing in Hartford, Conn. The gun-maker Remington is being sued by the families of the victims. Jessica Hill/AP hide caption
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Jessica Hill/AP
Connecticut State Police Detective Barbara J. Mattson holds a Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, the same type of gun used in the Sandy Hook shooting, during a 2013 hearing in Hartford, Conn. The gun-maker Remington is being sued by the families of the victims.
Jessica Hill/AP
The Supreme Court has denied Remington Arms Co.'s bid to block a lawsuit filed by families of victims of the Sandy Hook school massacre. The families say Remington should be held liable, as the maker of the AR-15-style rifle used in the 2012 killings.
The court opted not to hear the gun-maker's appeal, in a decision that was announced Tuesday morning. The justices did not include any comment about the case, Remington Arms Co. v. Soto, as they turned it away.
Remington had appealed to the highest federal court after the Connecticut Supreme Court allowed the Sandy Hook lawsuit to proceed in March. The company says the case "presents a nationally important question" about U.S. gun laws — namely, how to interpret the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which grants broad immunity to gun-makers and dealers from prosecution over crimes committed with their products.
Remington manufactured the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle that Adam Lanza used on Dec. 14, 2012, to kill 20 first-graders and six adults at the elementary school in Newtown, Conn.
