Parents of Las Vegas mass shooting victim sue gun makers
The parents of a Seattle woman killed in the Las Vegas shooting filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday against eight gun makers, accusing them of skirting federal and Nevada law by creating and selling weapons that can easily be modified to shoot automatic fire.
James and Ann-Marie Parsons argued in a complaint filed in Clark County District Court that Colt’s Manufacturing and seven other companies continually choose “profits over public safety,” making rifles that can be modified “within minutes, if not seconds” without any technical expertise.
The complaint also names three stores in Nevada and Utah where the killer bought weapons ahead of the 2017 attack, which left 58 dead — including the couple’s daughter, Carrie Parsons — and injured hundreds more.
Carrie Parsons, who recently had become engaged, attended the festival with a friend. When the sound of popping started about 10:05 p.m. on Oct. 1, 2017, the two quickly recognized it as gunfire, according to the lawsuit.
Together, they ran through and out of the Route 91 Harvest festival venue, leaped over two fences, crossed a street and had just come within sight of an ambulance when Carrie Parsons, 31, was fatally shot in the back.
“On the day Carrie was supposed to visit wedding venues, she was buried with the bouquet she had chosen to carry down the aisle,” the complaint reads.
Shattered lives
Katie Mesner-Hage, an attorney for Parsons’ parents, said the couple chose to sue now because they first needed to grieve and focus on healing in the wake of their daughter’s death.
“They’re incredibly wonderful people whose lives have been shattered by this,” Mesner-Hage said Wednesday.
A Colt spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. The company is based in Connecticut.
Mesner-Hage also represents the relatives of Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre victims in a separate lawsuit filed against gun makers in Connecticut. The Connecticut Supreme Court in March ruled that the case could continue despite a 2005 federal law intended to protect gun makers when their weapons are used in crimes.
In the Nevada complaint, the couple’s legal argument centers on historical gun law, starting with a 1934 federal de facto ban on “machine guns” passed with the Tommy gun in mind and stricter updates that came after World War II.
As the law changed, the lawsuit argues, gun makers followed, toeing the line between what was compliant and what was not.
Despite “hacks” like “bump firing,” which allows a shooter to achieve constant trigger action with his or her shoulder, or products like bump stocks, which simulate automatic fire and were used in the 2017 attack, “the Defendant manufacturers did nothing to change the design features of the weapon that rendered it susceptible to simple modification,” according to the complaint.
All the while, the lawsuit argues, companies courted buyers by advertising their products as military weapons, signaling their ability to be modified.
“It was a question of when — not if — a gunman would take advantage of the ease of modifying AR-15s to fire automatically in order to substantially increase the body count during a mass shooting,” the complaint said.
Mesquite store closed
In naming the three gun stores, the lawsuit argues that the dealers knowingly made AR-15-style weapons available for sale and sold them to the killer despite knowing that they “possessed design features which facilitate full automatic fire by simple modification.”
One of those gun stores, Guns and Guitars in Mesquite, shuttered in January.
Janis Sullivan, who owned the shop with her husband, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal on Wednesday that she was not aware of the lawsuit. In response to its allegations, Sullivan, 69, said, “We had not even heard of a bump stock when all of this happened.”
“It was my introduction to bump stocks when this whole thing happened,” she continued. “To me, I don’t understand the point in there being bump stocks.”
Discount Firearms & Ammo in Las Vegas and Sportsman’s Warehouse, which is based in Utah, also are named as defendants. A man who answered the phone Wednesday at Discount Firearms would not comment on the lawsuit, and a message left for a Sportsman’s Warehouse spokeswoman was not returned.
A separate lawsuit filed in the wake of the Las Vegas attack targeted Slide Fire Solutions, a bump stock manufacturer. The devices since have been federally banned.
Several other lawsuits also were filed in the wake of the attack, but the complaint submitted Tuesday was the first to target a gun maker.
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Contact Rachel Crosby at rcrosby@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3801. Follow @rachelacrosby on Twitter.
