[JURIST] One survivor and nine families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting on Tuesday filed an appeal to the Connecticut Supreme Court seeking to have the court reinstate their lawsuit against Remington. The families claim [AP report] that Remington, manufacturer of the gun used in the massacre, violated state law by advertising and selling a dangerous weapon to the public. The families’ prior lawsuit was dismissed based on the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act [text], federal legislation passed in 2005 that protects gun manufacturers from lawsuits in most circumstances where their firearms are used in a criminal manner.

In December of 2012, Adam Lanza killed 20 children at Sandy Hook Elementary [CNN backgrounder] with an Armalite Rifle Model 15 manufactured by Remington and legally purchased by his mother. The victims’ families filed a lawsuit against Remington in state court, stating in their complaint that the gunmakers continued selling semi-automatic rifles to the public, “disregarding the unreasonable risks the weapon poses ‘outside of specialized highly regulated institutions like the armed forces and law enforcement.” The complaint also alleged that the defendants knew that the sale of such assault rifles “posed an unreasonable and egregious risk of physical injury to others. In April, Judge Barbara Bellis denied [JURIST report] the defendants’ motion to dismiss upon consideration of the families’ legal claim that the gun companies may have negligently promoted a weapon too dangerous for civilian use. Judge Bellis then dismissed [JURIST report] the lawsuit in October, finding that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act prohibited such suits against gunmakers.