NEWTOWN, Conn. – Nine families of students killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre of 2012, along with a teacher who survived, are suing the gun manufacturer, distributor and retailer of the weapon used in the shooting.

Attorneys with the firm Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder filed a lawsuit in Bridgeport, Connecticut’s Superior Court today against Camfour, a gun distribution company, as well as Riverview Gun Sales and Freedom Group, the owners of Bushmaster, Keyt.com reports.

Those companies should never have distributed, sold or manufactured the AR-15 rifle used in the Newtown, Conn., shooting that killed 20 first-grade students and six adults on December 14, 2012, the lawsuit argues.

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“The risk of a mentally unstable individual gaining access to an assault rifle and unleashing its military firepower on innocent civilians is not theoretical for Bushmaster. It’s a fact,” attorney Katie Mesner-Hage, of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, wrote a press release, according to the news site.

The lawsuit alleges the AR-15, the type of rifle used in Newtown, “has no place among Americans’ handguns and hunting rifles.”

“The AR-15 rifle, designed as a lightweight but fearsome combat weapon for troops in Vietnam, can expel 30 bullets in a matter of seconds, each of which is capable of piercing body armor and causing catastrophic injury,” the suit reads.

Josh Koskoff, another attorney representing the parents, told The Wall Street Journal “there is so much ample evidence of the inability of the civilian world to control these weapons that (it) is no longer reasonable to entrust them to (civilians).”

Essentially, Koskoff and friends are attempting to argue a legal concept known as “negligent entrustment” and applying it to an entire gun industry,” which is typically used in cases involving specific individuals. It also conflicts with the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, “a 2005 law that was designed to block exactly this sort of litigation,” according to Reason.com.

“The law … bans lawsuits against gun makers and sellers for damages ‘resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse’ of their products. It does include an exception for ‘an action brought against a seller for negligent entrustment,’” according to the site.

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Reason also noted that the Sandy Hook shooter used  a legally compliant version of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, though Connecticut lawmakers have since made the weapon and any others like it illegal.

Dennis Henigan, a former director of the Legal Action Project at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, told the WSJ “the issue in this case will be whether courts are willing to construe the doctrine of negligent entrustment so broadly as to encompass a theory of liability that is based on the sale of a particular gun to the general public instead of to a potentially particular dangerous individual,” Reason reports.

Freedom Group, the company that owns Bushmaster, has not responded to media requests for comment on the lawsuit. Neither has Camfour, the gun distributor, or Riverview Gun Sales – the East Winsor retailer who sold the weapon used at Sandy Hook, according to CNN.