The week after Adam Lanza went on a shooting spree in Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., a federal judge in Philadelphia denied immunity to a police officer in a case where his son stole his department-issued gun to kill his estranged girlfriend.

“This decision by Judge Joyner was made shortly after Sandy Hook,” Suzanne McDonough told a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. “I think that’s why it was made.”