According to Firearm Chronicles
Gun manufacturers face never-ending attempts to pierce the protections given them by federal law when their lawfully-sold products are used by criminals. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was signed into law to prevent gun makers from being sued into bankruptcy by plaintiffs’ attorneys and gun control orgs.
The latest attempt to pierce that protective legal veil is coming from US District Court Judge Andrew P. Gordon in a lawsuit filed by survivors and family members of victims in the Mandalay Bay shooting in Las Vegas. He’s asking a Nevada court to rule whether the AR-15 rifles and bump stocks used by the killer meet the definition of machine guns (see our earlier post on Judge Gordon’s flawed reasoning here). Now Gordon wants the Nevada Supreme Court to decide the matter.
Here’s the AP’s report . . .
By Ken Ritter, AP
A U.S. judge is asking Nevada’s highest court to decide whether state law allows gun manufacturers and sellers to be held liable for deaths as he considers a lawsuit from the parents of a victim of the deadliest mass shooting in the nation’s modern history.
Federal law generally protects gun manufacturers and dealers when crimes are committed with their products. A negligence and wrongful death lawsuit filed last year in Las Vegas accuses eight firearms makers and several shops in Nevada and Utah of letting weapons be easily modified to fire like automatic weapons.
A shooter in 2017 outfitted weapons with “bump stock” attachments that let him fire in rapid succession from a Las Vegas high-rise hotel into an open-air concert crowd, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds of others.