Joshua Koskoff, the attorney who infamously called the American people “notoriously incompetent” a year ago as he railed agains the sale of the most popular rifle sold in the United States, was put in his place when his frivolous lawsuit against Remington was dismissed in October. His arguments ran afoul of the Protection of Lawful Commerce In Arms Act (PLCAA), which specifically protect the firearms industry from frivolous lawsuits.

Koskoff isn’t willing to quit, however, and has filed an appeal for the case to be reinstated.

The 10 families whose lawsuit against the world’s largest dealer of AR-15 rifles was dismissed last year say their case should be reinstated, arguing that the Sandy Hook massacre was no accident.

“The notion that what happened at Sandy Hook on December 14, 2012, was unimaginable is a lie,” argues the families’ lawyer, Josh Koskoff, in 50-page brief submitted to state Supreme Court this week. “Sandy Hook was simply gratuitous, senseless proof of what was already known: preparation is no match for an AR-15.”

The families’ argument that Remington is liable for the massacre of 26 first-graders and educators by an AR-15-wielding 20-year-old named A___ L___* was thrown out of Superior Court in October. The judge ruled that Remington is protected by federal law against claims when people misuse firearms.

The families are sticking to their argument that Remington was liable, saying the company ssly [sic] marketed the semi-automatic rifle to civilians.

The families argue that the Remington rifle used by L___ was developed “as a weapon of war so powerful, so accurate and so destructive to the human body, it vanquished the need for skilled hands or forgiving terrain.”

“Over the last several decades, scores of Americans – not soldiers but civilians – have witnessed firsthand the effects of that mechanical prowess – not on battlefields, but in malls, movie theaters, places of worship and schools,” Koskoff writes in the families’ brief. “(Remington) did not question the wisdom of selling the military’s superlative combat weapon to civilians.”

Koskoff is of course lying, not to mention historically ignorant. Civilians have typically had much greater quality weapons with greater firepower than the military throughout most of American history, without significant issue.

The first AR-15s were sold on the civilian market to sportsmen several years before the U.S. military adopted the M16 as a general-issue rifle. AR-15s have been sold to civilians for more than half a century, and they are not “weapons of war,” as no major military has ever issued them. The militaries of the world have always used selective-fire variants of the M16 rifle and M4 carbine that are restricted under the National Firearms Act of 1934, and which have not been manufactured at all for the civilian market in 31 years, thanks to the Hughes Amendment to the Firearms Owners Protection Act (FOPA) in 1986.

Put bluntly, even collectors vetted by the federal government cannot buy actual “weapons of war” manufactured within the past three decades, and Koskoff’s continued attempts to conflated selective-fire military weapons with self-loading rifles is dishonest and disingenuous, and is once again likely doomed to fail.

I sincerely hope that then minority of the grieving Sandy Hook families that joined in this quixotic bit of grandstanding aren’t paying Koskoff by the hour for his fact-challenged and rhetorically laughable claims. He’s only leading them to another disappointing defeat, in a case that never should have been brought.