“A lawsuit by families of victims of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School has the potential to significantly change what the world knows about how the gun industry thinks and operates. After years of delays, the lawsuit is moving forward, which may force the gun industry to make public what it considers private. (This special report for WAMU was produced by Ryan Lindsay).

On December 14, 2012, 20 first-graders and six staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School were shot and killed by a 20-year-old man within minutes. The mass shooting shook the nation, surpassing the carnage of 1999’s Columbine High School shooting, in which 12 students and one teacher were fatally shot.

Two years later, the families filed a lawsuit alleging that the gun manufacturer Remington Arms Co. should be held responsible for selling a rifle to the civilian market that ‘posed an unreasonable and egregious risk of physical risk to others.’ The suit suggests that the company should have known ‘the unreasonably high risk that the [Bushmaster] XM15-E2X would be used in a mass shooting to inflict maximum casualties before the law enforcement was able to intervene.’ Remington is the parent company of Bushmaster and its associated brands.”

To listen to the full story and read the report, click here.