Nevada court sides with gunmakers in Las Vegas shooting suit
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Debris is strewn through the scene of a mass shooting at a music festival near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip, Monday, Oct. 2, 2017, in Las Vegas. (AP Photo/John Locher)
Friday, Dec. 3, 2021 | 1:03 p.m.
CARSON CITY — Nevada's Supreme Court ruled gun manufacturers cannot be held responsible for the deaths in the 2017 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip because a state law shields them from liability unless the weapon malfunctions.
The parents of a woman who was among the 58 killed that night filed a wrongful death suit against Colt Manufacturing Co. and several other gun manufacturers in 2019.
The suit said the gun companies “knowingly manufactured and sold weapons designed to shoot automatically because they were aware their AR-15s could be easily modified with bump stocks to do so, thereby violating federal and state machinegun prohibitions.”
The shooter used an AR-15 with a bump stock when he fired 1,049 rounds in 10 just minutes on the crowd of 22,000 from his suite in a casino-resort tower.
Nevada's Supreme Court largely sided Thursday with the manufacturers' argument that Nevada law immunizes them from civil actions, "with a single exception for products liability actions involving design or production defects that cause the firearm to malfunction."
“We hold (the law) provides the gun companies immunity from the wrongful death and negligence per se claims asserted against them under Nevada law in this case," Justice Kristina Pickering wrote in Thursday's unanimous decision.
