AN INTRODUCTION
It was on December 14, 2012 that a madman obtained and used a Bushmaster Assault Weapon, a hand gun, and a bolt-action rifle to slaughter twenty children and six adults at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut.
The gun lobby attacked. Conspiracy theories proliferated. Then, the parents of those children fought back.
AN ANALOGY
Imagine that you are one country in Europe that must singlehandedly defeat the largest country in the world, a country which casually threatens the use of nuclear weapons, and which sports a troop and equipment superiority ratio of approximately 5:1 (troops), 10:1 (aircraft and helicopters), and 60:1 (warships and submarines). Your entire population is 28% of your invader’s, and the political and military leaders of the warring nation are known colloquially as “The Impaler” and “The Butcher,” respectively.
You have no chance.
Now, imagine a few parents in one small Connecticut town taking on the money and power of the Gun Industry and the Right Wing blogosphere. These are the Sandy Hook parents.
They had less than no chance.
After their unimaginable loss, the Gun Industry heaped scorn on the parents, and conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones called them liars and “crisis actors.” While President Obama came up with tears in a press conference about the Sandy Hook children, NRA President Wayne LaPierre came up with a new PR campaign:
The new public relations campaign was disgusting, and the timing was as if the NRA was wiping the blood off of its sword with a flourish. It came days after Sandy Hook, days after those children were mowed down in Newtown. The PR campaign was this,
“The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.”
You see, we need more guns in elementary schools.
Against this backstory of unimaginable heartbreak and unrelenting cruelty the Sandy Hook parents found the courage to fight back. And against all odds, they have scored victory after victory.
REMINGTON ARMS
Remington Arms manufactured the Bushmaster Assault Weapon that killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary. The parents of the 20 children sued the company, even though a Republican majority in Congress and a Republican president had enacted the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act back in 2005.
The PLCAA basically grants immunity from lawsuit to manufacturers and dealers when one of their customers uses the gun for a crime. Following that law, the trial court in Connecticut granted the company’s motion to dismiss.
The parents appealed.
By a thin 4-3 margin, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs had no claims for wrongful death because of the PLCAA, but it let the families proceed with their request for “unspecified damages” related to their claim that Remington had violated the state’s Unfair Trade Practices Act with their provocative marketing campaign for the weapon.
The United States Supreme Court refused to hear Remington’s appeal in November 2019. So, the case was sent back to the trial court where it was set to go to a jury in Connecticut.
Seven months later, Remington Arms filed for bankruptcy. Its insurers settled with the Sandy Hook parents for $73 million. That, you see, is the power of sympathetic plaintiffs with a claim for “unspecified damages” and a tale of blinding grief.
A jury could have awarded nothing, hundreds of millions or one hundred billion dollars.
INFOWARS
If Reichsminister Joseph Goebbels ran a chatty gossip and conspiracy theory website, it would have been an InfoWars clone. The website and its founder, Alex Jones, have been described as follows:
- InfoWars started as a public access show in Austin, Texas in 1999.
- “InfoWars, and in particular Jones, advocate numerous conspiracy theories, particularly around purported domestic false flag operations by the U.S. government (which they allege include the 9/11 attacks and Sandy Hook shootings).”
- “Jones has … been banned from many platforms for violating their terms of service, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, iTunes, and Roku.”
- “Alex Jones is a fucking jerkoff that profited from lies, hurt people, and now files for bankruptcy like his idol did 6 times.” WeThePeople on Twitter.
The Sandy Hook parents filed multiple lawsuits against Alex Jones and InfoWars for defamation. Jones took a cavalier attitude to the suits, failing to respond to discovery requests and sit for depositions.
After having been warned multiple times, the judges in these actions defaulted Jones for his failure to provide discovery and sit for depositions. On April 18, 2022, Alex Jones and three of his companies filed for bankruptcy protection.
Prior to the bankruptcy filing, the parents had notified the court that Jones was secreting assets. Moreover, under bankruptcy law, there is an automatic stay of any civil legal cases, but there is no asset protection for intentional torts.
Defamation is the epitome of an intentional tort.
Once the automatic stay is lifted, the Sandy Hook parents will have their trial on the amount of damages, and when Judgment is entered, it will allow the parents to hound Alex Jones until the day that he dies.
Then, they can go after his estate.
OTHER DEFENDANTS
Besides sending Remington Arms Company and InfoWars into bankruptcy, the Sandy Hook parents took on other monsters in court, including the mother of the murderer and the author of a book entitled, Nobody Died at Sandy Hook.
Various Sandy Hook parents filed lawsuits against the killer’s mother, alleging that she failed to secure the weapon, and that she had had sufficient warning to know that he posed a very serious threat. For example, shortly before the Newtown massacre, the murderer had drawn a picture of a woman holding a child with the both of them being shot from behind, blood splattering all over the page.
Since the murderer’s first victim was his mom, the Sandy Hook parents went after the mother’s homeowner’s policy, which raises this question: Perhaps if there are more of these we’d see insurance companies getting involved in the gun control battle?
One of the parents also sued the author of the book Nobody Died at Sandy Hook. The book claimed that the events in Newtown were staged by Homeland Security and local police with the cooperation of the media and “crisis actors.” After that $450,000.00 judgment and the recall of the book, perhaps publishers will think twice before printing crazy and defamatory conspiracy theories.
Other monsters who have paid a price include the man who stole a memorial to two of the victims and later called the parents of one of the children, taunting them. He received a year in prison. Additional tormentors have been arrested and are awaiting the disposition of their cases or have pled guilty and received their sentences.
A FEW BLESSINGS
Amidst all of this pain, there have been a few good turns beyond the bankruptcies of Remington Arms and InfoWars. With the $73 million settlement with Remington, the gun industry has been forced to back off of their gratuitously violent advertising.
The murder of Trayvon Martin occurred that same year, in 2012, and there was a similar response to that grievous injustice: grassroots organizations sprouted up to fight for basic human decency.
One of the Sandy Hook parents, Lenny Pozner, started the HONR Network, which began as an effort to protect the surviving victims of gun violence and their families from the rabid conspiracy theorists and other assorted nutjobs. It has since grown to include in its mission the protection of people from all kinds of online harassment. The organization has been involved in policy changes at Facebook, YouTube and WordPress.
Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety grew out of the grief and the public outcry over the Newtown mass murder.
Shannon Watts started a Facebook page the day after Sandy Hook that took its guiding principles from Mothers Against Drunk Driving. It became a grassroots movement with chapters springing up all across the country. “Moms Demand Action now has chapters in every state and over 6 million supporters nationwide, more than the NRA.”
Everytown also grew out of the Sandy Hook tragedy, as led by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Between these organizations, there has been progress in state houses across the country in enacting sensible gun safety legislation. They can boast about having “stopped the NRA’s priority legislation in statehouses more than 90 percent of the time, and [having] helped pass hundreds of gun safety laws across the country….”
Those organizations and others have put the gun safety issue on the ballot with voters as well. They have developed a “Gun Sense Voter” campaign to rally voters around candidates who pledge to work on gun safety and control. In fact, Moms Demand Action and Everytown asks their supporters to themselves take the Gun Sense Voter pledge.
You can donate to, and become a part of, Moms Demand Action and Everytown—they have joined forces—at this link.
Like the Sandy Hook parents, you can help slay monsters.