Luddly Neddite
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- Sep 14, 2011
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School Shooter Adam Lanza Used Military-Style Bushmaster Rifle
Adam Lanza used a semiautomatic Bushmaster .223 rifle during his rampage through Sandy Hook Elementary School on Friday, firing dozens of high-velocity rounds as he killed 20 children and six adults, authorities said Sunday.
Lanza, 20, carried "many high-capacity clips" for the lightweight military-style rifle, Lt. Paul Vance, a spokesman for the Connecticut State Police, told The Huffington Post in an email. Two handguns and a shotgun were also recovered at the scene.
... owned by a New York-based hedge fund, Cerberus Capital Management...
The massacre in Newtown is far from Bushmaster's first brush with tragedy. The company's semiautomatic rifles were used in at least four high-profile mass shootings since 1999, including a 2009 rampage that left 10 dead across southern Alabama, and a 2010 shooting spree in Virginia that killed eight people over 19 hours.
Most notoriously, a Bushmaster .223 rifle was used by the so-called Beltway snipers, John Allen Muhammed and Lee Boyd Malvo, who murdered 15 people in 2001 and 2002. In 2004, Bushmaster settled a lawsuit brought by families of the Beltway victims, which alleged that the company failed to take precautions to ensure that its guns did not fall into the hands of criminals.
The company settled the suit for $500,000, but said the settlement was not an admission of culpability.