Setting sights on the ar 15 after las vegas shooting, lawyers target gun companies - the new york times

7/3/19, 2)49 PMSetting Sights on the AR-15: After Las Vegas Shooting, Lawyers Target Gun Companies - The New York Times
Page 1 of 8https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/03/us/bumpstocks-las-vegas-guns-manufacturers-lawsuit.html
By Mike Baker
July 3, 2019
For years, advocates of gun control have struggled to pierce a legal shield that
protects ﬁrearms manufacturers from liability, even as gunmen in mass
shootings have relied on their powerful wares to amplify the carnage of their
attacks.
More than a decade ago, New York City failed in its bid to go after some
gunmakers under public nuisance laws. In 2009, a case against a manufacturer
associated with a series of sniper shootings in Washington, D.C., was thrown out.
Then, in 2015, the family of a victim in the theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., lost
a case against an ammunition dealer — and was ordered under state law to pay
the dealer’s legal fees.
The vast immunity offered by a 2005 federal law shielding gun manufacturers
from most liability began to give way earlier this year, when the Connecticut
Supreme Court issued a milestone ruling allowing some families victimized in
the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting to sue Remington Arms and
other companies over their marketing practices.
Setting Sights on the AR-15:
After Las Vegas Shooting,
Lawyers Target Gun CompaniesU.S.

Now, building on that success, those same lawyers are opening a new front
against firearm manufacturers, working with the parents of a victim in the 2017
mass shooting in Las Vegas to argue that the design of AR-15-style rifles used in
the massacre violates federal law.
Thousands of people impacted by the Las Vegas shooting have filed claims
against MGM Resorts, which owns the hotel where the gunman took up his
perch before firing more than 1,000 rounds into a crowd of concertgoers, killing
58. But the lawsuit filed Tuesday night appears to be the first to directly target
gun manufacturers based on the ease with which their products can be
converted into weapons of large-scale destruction.
[A Las Vegas police officer who said he “froze” and remained one floor below the
gunman has been fired.]
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Katie Mesner-Hage, one of the lawyers on the case, said the plaintiffs will try to
prove that manufacturers of firearms have made conscious decisions to allow
their firearms to be readily adjusted to fire as fully automatic weapons, which
are otherwise heavily restricted under state and federal laws.
“We can’t fix the inherent danger of firearms,” Ms. Mesner-Hage said. “But we
can address reckless and irresponsible corporate conduct.”
Given the federal protections, the case faces a challenging path forward,
especially with a conservative majority on the United States Supreme Court that
could take a dim view of any liability for manufacturers.

Filed in Nevada state court, the latest case argues that the AR-15-style rifles that
have become such common weapons in mass shootings are illegal because they
are one modification away — most commonly, by adding a simple device known
as a “bump stock” — from approaching the rapid-firing lethality of a fully
automatic rifle. The guns are often designed for customization with various
accessories.
[Read: What is a bump stock and how does it work?]
The bump stocks used by the Las Vegas gunman, Stephen Paddock, were
modified versions of the gun’s stock that allowed him to fire about nine rounds
per second. Last year, the Trump administration banned bump stocks,
prohibiting the sale of them and ordering the destruction of those already in use.
The new case targets not the bump stocks, but the makers of the rifles
themselves; a bump stock is only one way in which such rifles might be modified
to become more lethal, the plaintiffs argue.
Colt Manufacturing Co., listed as the lead defendant in the case, which also
named seven other manufacturers of AR-15-style guns, did not respond to
messages seeking comment on Tuesday.
Lawrence G. Keane, general counsel for the industry’s National Shooting Sports
Foundation, said the lawsuit was trying to blame manufacturers for “the
deranged actions of a madman,” likening the legal argument to blaming Ford for
the actions of a driver whose car had been modified with aftermarket parts.
“I don’t know any right-minded person that would say that’s a valid legal theory,”
Mr. Keane said.
The 2005 shield

After legal victories against the tobacco industry demonstrated the power of
such litigation in the 1990s, individuals and municipalities turned their attention
to gun companies.
At that point, the cases were ﬂimsy, said Adam Winkler, a law professor at the
University of California, Los Angeles, who has written about gun laws. But the
gun industry saw litigation as a potential existential threat, made it the No. 1
priority to resolve, and worked with the National Riﬂe Association to convince
Congress to alter federal law so that companies would have broad immunity
under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
James and Ann-Marie Parsons, whose daughter, Carrie, was killed in the Las Vegas massacre.
Hilary Swift for The New York Times

“Our laws should punish criminals who use guns to commit crimes, not law-
abiding manufacturers of lawful products,” President George W. Bush said at the
time the law was passed in 2005. “This legislation will further our efforts to stem
frivolous lawsuits, which cause a logjam in America’s courts, harm America’s
small businesses, and benefit a handful of lawyers at the expense of victims and
consumers.”
The law included some narrow exceptions to the immunity, including a seller
negligently entrusting a weapon to a dangerous person or a company violating
laws surrounding the sale or marketing of the product.
In the Sandy Hook lawsuit, families focused on the marketing for the AR-15-style
Bushmaster, which the gunman used in the massacre. The marketing materials
linked the gun to “macho vigilantism and military-style insurrection,” lawyers
argued, highlighting one slogan used in advertising: “Consider your man card
reissued.”
State Supreme Court justices agreed that the case could move forward on the
narrow issue of how the weapons were marketed. The manufacturer, Remington,
has said it will seek intervention from the United States Supreme Court.
Mr. Winkler said the Sandy Hook case could have substantial implications,
though it is difficult to predict how the Supreme Court might respond. “It has the
potential to be far-reaching,” he said.
A simple modification?

Under the new lawsuit, lawyers have traced the history of gun legislation and
regulatory efforts to limit or prohibit guns with the capability of continuously
firing bullets with a single pull on the trigger.
Federal law prohibits most weapons that are designed to fire more than one shot
automatically. In its handbook about the firearm law, the Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives says it has interpreted “designed” to include
weapons that “possess design features which facilitate full automatic fire by
simple modification. …”
AR-15-style rifles are designed for modification and accessorization, with parts
that can be removed and added to improve the core product. One of the
components that can be modified is the stock of the gun.
In the Las Vegas shooting, the gunman used AR-15-style rifles modified with
bump stocks, which harness the firearm’s recoil energy. A gunman can hold his
trigger finger steady as the gun slides back and forth, causing a repeated press
of the trigger so that he doesn’t have to move his finger.
“It was not just possible — or even probable — that 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. It was inevitable,”
lawyers wrote in their Nevada complaint.
Mr. Keane of the National Shooting Sports Foundation emphasized that the
bump stock was an aftermarket accessory and disputed that the option makes
the AR-15 convertible into a fully automatic weapon under the definition of the
law.
“It’s customizable, but the underlying semiautomatic action is not altered,” Mr.
Keane said.

But Steve Lindley, a program manager with the Brady Campaign and Center to
Prevent Gun Violence in Los Angeles, a gun control advocacy group, said AR-15
stocks can be easily unscrewed, removed and replaced virtually instantaneously
with something like a bump stock. At that point, he said, “You have an
assimilated fully automatic firearm.”
It is that purported ease with which the gun can be converted that lies at the
heart of the latest lawsuit. Did its manufacturers deliberately design it that way,
and does that leave them unprotected by the immunity afforded under federal
law?
The A.T.F. determined in 2010 that it could not regulate bump stocks because
they could not be defined as the kind of automatic weapon prohibited under the
law. Last year, the Trump administration reversed that decision, banning the
product. One industry group later challenged that decision, but the Supreme
Court allowed the ban to stand.
Running for her life
The Nevada case was filed by the parents of Carrie Parsons, who was 31 years
old and living in the Seattle area when she went to Las Vegas for a weekend with
friends and attended the festival where the shooting occurred.
As the first shots sent people scattering, Ms. Parsons and a friend began
running, holding each other’s hands, according to the lawsuit. They managed to
leave the venue, ran through a parking lot and climbed over a fence. As they
approached a street and an ambulance, a bullet struck Ms. Parsons in the
shoulder. She managed to reach the ambulance, but did not survive her wound.

James Parsons, who is the plaintiff in the lawsuit along with his wife, Ann-Marie,
said the public needed to know the level of danger posed by weapons such as
those used in Las Vegas.
“I’m not trying to ban guns. I’m not trying to change the Second Amendment,”
Mr. Parsons said. “But when you manufacture something that is easily illegal,
those people should be held responsible.”
A version of this article appears in print on July 2, 2019, on Page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Suit in Las Vegas Shooting
Seeks to Prove the Design of the AR-15 Riﬂe Is Illegal

Setting sights on the ar 15 after las vegas shooting, lawyers target gun companies - the new york times

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Setting sights on the ar 15 after las vegas shooting, lawyers target gun companies - the new york times