Las Vegas Shooting Lawsuit
This October 2017 file photo released by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department Force Investigation Team Report shows the interior of Stephen Paddock's 32nd floor room of the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas after a mass shooting. A federal judge wants Nevada's highest court to tell him whether gun manufacturers and sellers can be held liable under state law for negligence and wrongful death in the case of a Seattle woman killed in the Las Vegas Strip mass shooting in 2017. (Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department via AP, File)
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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.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Gordon asked last month for the ruling from the Nevada Supreme Court, saying there are “important public policy ramifications.” A hearing has not yet been set.

“I am particularly concerned,” Gordon wrote, that attorneys for the gun makers argued they would be immune from liability under state law even if they “manufactured and sold Tommy guns or M-16 rifles to civilians.”

Attorneys for Colt’s Manufacturing Co. and 11 other defendants did not immediately respond to telephone and email messages.

James and Ann-Marie Parsons of Seattle, whose 31-year-old daughter Carolyn Lee “Carrie” Parsons died in the shooting, are seeking unspecified monetary damages. Their lawyer, Richard Friedman, said Tuesday that “federal law provides a lot of immunity, but not total immunity.”

“We’re saying you were selling guns that meet the definition of machine guns in violation of federal law, so you don’t get protection,” he said.

The Trump administration banned bump stocks last year, making them illegal under the same federal laws that prohibit machine guns.

Friedman said a federal judge deferring to the state high court is uncommon but not unprecedented and acknowledged that the Parsons’ lawsuit could hinge on the decision by the Nevada justices.

The Las Vegas shooter killed himself before police blasted through the door of his 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay resort. Police and the FBI say that while it appeared he sought notoriety, they could not identify any “single or clear motivating factor” for the meticulously planned attack.

The owner of the hotel, MGM Resorts International, reached a sweeping out-of-court settlement last October, agreeing to funnel up to $800 million to the families of the victims.

The agreement resolved lawsuits in at least 10 states, but MGM Resorts acknowledged no liability or guilt for the massacre.

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84 COMMENTS

  1. Absolutely the families and surviving victims should receive a share of the dead maniac’s estate. That’s entirely fair.

    Going beyond that to punish manufacturers of perfectly lawful to produce and sell products is an outrage, and utterly inexcusable.

    Another thing, if you study the impact on his ability to hit his victims you will come to the inescapable conclusion that the bump/slide fire stocks were so damaging to accuracy that far fewer people were harmed than would have been without those rapid firing gadgets. For all the horror and death of one madman’s rampage, had he been knowledgeable and skilled he never would have used those accuracy destroying range toys, and many more deaths would have resulted because of it.

    In any case, hell no, bump stocks are not machine guns and there should not be any punishment for their manufacture or sale.

    • The letter of the law is clear, bump stocks are not machine guns. Even the ATF already ruled on this and they ruled them as not machine guns. They don’t fit the definition of a machine gun. If people want the law changed, they do it with the legislature, not the courts. It’s really clear:

      26 U.S.C. § 5845(b)
      NFA Machinegun:
      Any weapon which shoots, is designed to shoot, or can be readily restored to shoot, automatically more than one shot without manual reloading, by a single function of the trigger.

      Holding the trigger halfway while pushing forward on the stock with the other hand is NOT a “single function of the trigger.”

    • You are clueless about them being acuracy destroying range toys. If you can put hits on targets at the rate he did at 550 yards without a slide fire I would be honesty impressed. He managed to hit about 40-50% at a firing rate north of 600 rpm. In addition he had 12 rifles so overheating was not an issue. Had he decided to keep firing with the 5.56 rifles instead of messing with his 7.62 guns he could have easily double or even tripled the casualty count. As it was the greatest midigating factor on the reduced death toll was the fact that at that range the energy left in the 5.56 at that range is between a .380 and 9mm. The hit to kill ratio also supports the theory that the lack of fatalities has more to do with the range than accuracy.

      • You don’t in any way disprove the assertion that that bump-stocks adversely effect accuracy. After the first shot it is clear that accuracy drops to be useful only for area fire and suppression. Do you really think you could even get 10moa of accuracy from the shots after the first one? He only got hits because his target, a crowd, was very large. Also, if a person fills a supersoaker with gasoline and torches someone doesn’t meant that the supersoaker is not a toy.

        • Honestly, what is wrong with you? Do you really expect head shots at 500 yards. The whole reason that the situation was so scary was that he could totally rip up a crowd at range. So what you are saying is that a bump stock is good for mowing down a crowd, in that case I kind of agree with you.

          However, I think this shows that they are not the spray and pray device you make it out to be.

      • If you can put hits on targets at the rate he did at 550 yards without a slide fire I would be honesty impressed.

        LOL. Well, yeah. It’s large crowd. Do you really think he was aiming at individual people??? He was likely just pointing it in the direction of the crowd.

        The bump stock is most certainly less accurate than a genuine machine gun and less accurate than a semi auto.

        • That’s the whole point. The slide fire makes is relatively easy for a whack job to dump a few thousand rounds into a crowd in minutes up to half a kilometre away. But I can guarantee you after Vegas, you will NEVER get the machine gun registry reopened.

    • So called bumpstocks were legal according to the ATF when this incident happened. You cannot change history to justify an lawsuit. Beyond that, the second amendment says “the right of the individual to keep and bear arma, shall not be infringed”. That means any and all types of arms.

      • No argument from me on that point. I’m certain that judge is trying to push it into state court as the feds want to shut down ANYTHING that will put the bump stocks back into the media.

        • Did the guns used in the shooting get published yet?

          Because that has never happened.

          All of this is conjecture and futile until that has been made public knowledge.

          Did the ATF get to see the guns used, that the FBI has in their possession?

        • Yes they were, I’m not going to find the links but they were published. Hell, TAG has the links in a different article

        • And what is the point of the ATF getting them. I trust the FBI more the the ATF. Well not really, the FBI is just far more competent. The only thing the ATF would do is trace the SN and I think the FBI can accomplish that on their own. Its just with local PD that the ATF brings any value.

    • Remember that this was a FALSE FLAG perpetrated by the FBI to cover a Saudi Prince’s Illegal operations and indiscretions and for other purposes.

      Notice how it is always ‘ONE MADMAN’ perpetrator who is also killed. The CIA learned their lesson with Lee Harvey Oswald.

  2. Nothing worse than a judge the can’t make a decision,
    What’s the point of all that law schooling?
    Here’ s my decision,,, follow the U S Constitution & Bill of Rights,,,,there fixed that for ya judge…
    .. Your Welcome..

  3. The guns were the star of this show, not the “shooter”, that is of course assuming it was even him to begin with and not someone else who made use of the body.

    More backdoor gun control, more activist judges.

  4. Even if bump stocks were “machine guns” they weren’t “found” to be so until after this shooting. So there can be no liability. Firing fast doesn’t make a machine gun or Jerry Miculek would have to register his index finger!

    • “Even if bump stocks were “machine guns” they weren’t “found” to be so until after this shooting.”

      If a court decides that an ATF regulation is “law”…
      If a court decides that a law created after the event is applicable…

      Then….we would actually have a situation of an ex post facto law.

      • Wait, you mean like the Unconstitutional, ex post facto laws that are passed by States ALL THE TIME when it comes to Firearms and Magazine possession? Like THOSE??? So I can own a Car made in 1928 that has NO safety equipment of any kind, no emissions controls, etc., because those were the “regulations at the time”… but it’s perfectly FINE to ban Firearms and/or Magazines that were completely LEGAL and met applicable Regulations “at the time of purchase”??? The LOGIC (or lack thereof) that Gun Grabbers try to apply in these situations is MIND BOGGLING!!!

        • That is not how ex post facto laws. And it would be constitutional to ban that old car, just no elected official would be stupid enough to try and pass one

        • “Wait, you mean like the Unconstitutional, ex post facto laws that are passed by States ALL THE TIME when it comes to Firearms and Magazine possession? Like THOSE???”

          No. Ex post facto, and contraband are entirely different.

          In simplest terms, “ex post facto” means “before the fact”, or “before the act”. That is, making an activity, process, or item illegal before it was illegal. There once was a practice of creating a law/regulation/process that rendered something illegal. Once established, persons who, prior to the law, acted in a way that was illegal at the promulgation of the law, could be charged for illegality before the law existed.

          In gun laws, it is perfectly constitutional to establish something as being illegal, henceforth after the effective date of the law. There is no going back in time and charging people.

          This is how contraband laws work. EX: You had a long gun with a chainsaw bayonet. Had that puppy since forever. Today, a law states that those bayonets are illegal, and unless you surrender them in X-days, you are guilty of possession of an illegal weapon. The law would not be “ex post facto”. If, however, the law stated that anyone who ever owned such a bayonet at any time can be charged with a crime…that law would be ex post facto.

          In the instant case, the judge is asking state court to determine if the shooter can be held liable for breaking a law that did not exist at the time of the shooting (the intent being to pile on more charges for which recompense can be sought). If the state court declares that since, years later, bump stocks are legally defined as machine guns then the shooter can be “charged”, or “declared” guilty of possession of an unregistered machine gun, then the court would be making the bump stock law/regulation ex post facto. (this is not legal advice, but deconstructing the meaning of words as they are defined)

  5. At the time the maniac bought the bump stocks they were perfectly legal. It was only afterward that an arbitrary regulatory change made them into illegal “machine guns.”

    Making the manufacturers liable ex post facto is supposed to unconstitutional but the Constitution seems to be a dead letter these days.

    • Get caught with a bump stock and see what happens. The Trump administration deliberately ignored Federal Law to ban these devices. Republicans always seem to succeed where Democrats fail when it comes to gun control.

    • The way the ban was written it’s not ex post facto, because the law didn’t change. Only the interpretation of the law.

      Also in response to every comment on the proposed rule change arguing that this would turn all AR’s into machine guns, the ATF responded “nah, nobody would ever go that far.”

      • If the ATF can reinterpret the law that says “by a single function of the trigger” to include bump stocks which do not operate the trigger and they do not change how a semi-auto rifle operates, then they can reinterpret the law to include whatever they want.

        • “… then they can reinterpret the law to include whatever they want.”

          Indeed. There is even a Supreme Court approved process call “the Chevron doctrine”. In short, the process allows federal agencies to interpret their own regulations, and avoid judicial reviews. The “interpretation” can include additional language to “clarify” the intent and/or mechanism of an agency rule. The doctrine permits publishing those changes without public comment (which is a bogus concept in itself).

          https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/chevron_deference
          (Note: “administrative law” is very different from what we think of as “civil law”)

  6. I wanna sure ford and Home depot too. a home depot ford truck was used to run down several people. Should they be sued too? Are home depot and Ford liable for someone renting their truck to commit a crime?

    • Yes inanimate objects are the cause of all this mayhem and death. Where have you been? It’s never the person doing the actions fault it is always the object being used.

  7. bump stocks at the time they were supposed to of been used were legal to make and use and like another poster put on the ability to hit with any auto fired weapon is hard to do why do you think most military weapons are single or 3 shot burst or at least to the best of my knowledge but I do know its hard to hit just firing fast another thing is that a lot ou ARs and AKs the barrels will overheat real quick and the gun can come apart so the only that should be at fault is him

  8. I know, crazy talk, but how is Colt liable for acts committed with a “machine gun”, after a purchaser modified it to be one?

    I’m ignoring all the stupidity with bump stock bans completely. I don’t understand how Colt, or any firearm manufacturer, is liable for damage caused by a second manufacturers product installed and used by yet another party? We are two entities away from the manufacturer of the firearm at that point.

    • Let’s say a baby chokes, turns purple and dies from a baby rattle. An attorney will sue the rattle manufacturer, the company that made the packaging, the company that made the plastic, the company that molded the rattle, the store that sold the rattle, etc.
      It’s like North Korea where if one person says something unflattering about the dear leader that person and their entire family is killed.

    • Apparently in their minds Colt should have known and made their gun “unbumpable.” Recall all semis to add a trigger timer or something so you can only fire one shot every five seconds. Since an AR 15 equals “weapon of war designed for killing hundreds on the streets” to some minds (or at least that is the propaganda message they use) the real problem is that Colt and the other manufacturers shouldn’t be selling AR15s at all to anyone besides the police and military.

      • You can’t expect Armalite or Colt, or any other clone maker, to forward project 50 years to someone making an EXTERNAL accessory to bypass a trigger control group. The rules and laws of the time were concerned with the INTERNAL parts operation and the manufacturers complied with those laws.

        It would be like car manufacturers being liable for third party aftermarket modifications to vehicles that may improve performance at the cost of polluting emissions.

  9. One bad guy does something wrong with firearms and everyone who owns firearms automatically shares the guilt? That “logic'” is what is known as knee jerk insanity. Same knee jerk insanity PM trudeau is using in Canada. Same knee jerk insanity used by Gun Control zealots and tyrants worldwide. With such insanity going on it’s a wonder when some DUI kills a dozen people that all cars have not been banned.
    It does not take a court or an act of congress to determine if a firearm equipped with a Bump Stock is a machine gun. A Bump Stock equipped firearm is definitely not a machine gun. It is a contraption that makes noise and wastes ammo. To call a Bump Stock a machine gun is an insult to those who pay thousands for a machine gun and have to jump through numerous big brother government hoops to own a real machine gun. A bump stock has no gears, levers, or machined components that are within the firearm and are necessary to classify it as a machine gun. Case Closed.

  10. The tricky part is that the way the ATF banned bumpstocks it said that bumpstocks always were machine guns, and the ATF had simply failed to consider the definition of the word “automatic” up until that time. So according to the ATF these companies illegally sold machine guns, which means they aren’t protected.

    They will argue that it’s not a retroactive law because the law never changed, only the ATFs understanding of the law.

    The ATF should never have been allowed to ban bumpstocks. The ATF repeatedly said bumpstocks are not machine guns for years. The ATF also said it did not have the authority to ban bumpstocks. All until a bureaucrat decided he could reinterpret “automatically” to mean “by repeated and consistent manual manipulation”.

    • At best, that would allow suing whomever sold the bump stocks, but not the sellers of the MSRs; those remain legal under the ATF’s reinterpretation at Trump’s command.

    • Bump stocks always were an edge case and had been previously banned (with a spring). The fact is that they went from a toy on a .22 rifle to being fairly effective on a .223. Once one was turned on a crowd, well the writing was on the wall.

      If ‘Machine guns” only the equivalent of a Chauchat firing 240 RMP we may still have them. But once gangsters started running around with tommy guns we got the NFA. Now we have things like the Knight’s Assault Machine Gun and you will NEVER see new machine guns in civilian hands.

      • They were never an edge case. The gun is still semi-automatic. It still fires once per each pull of the trigger. If you want to change the law, change the law, but as the law is written now, a bump stock is in no way a machine gun.

        • Agree. The bump stock doesn’t operate anything on the gun. It only operates your finger.

      • Lets see about edge case, first of all, they needed to get a AFT ruling, then they were legal, then they were illegal, then they removed a spring and now they are legal. Sounds like an edge case to me. Also there are versions that did not even use your trigger finger, see the slide fire sled. Still used the exact operating principle of the regular stock, but they did not want to push their luck.

        But at the end of the day, they can be set up in such a way that they are reliable, effective and can really chew up a crowd. But if you want to lump then in with all semi auto, don’t be supersized if we end up with no semi auto rifles.

        At least I will tell it to your face, most people in the gun would will just ghost you. Why is this judge trying to get the STATE supreme court to ask, because the Feds just want this to go away.

  11. “If people wanted the law changed they would pass legislation”. Do you really want that bill going threw Congress? Who knows what kind of crap will get attached. And the last thing anyone wanta is videos detailing how to set up a effective slidefire equiped rifle all over mainstream media. I still think that no one is happy about most people knowing how good of a pipe bomb you can make with a pressure cooker. There is a reason you can NOT find videos about the right way to set one up. Lots of videos showing them being used.

    • So the bump stock ban was an illegal maneuver to forestall the possibility even worse gun control. That’s a fair assessment. However, we shouldn’t pretend that it’s a valid interpretation of the law, acceptable policy making, or anything other than the least bad outcome that could be achieved at the time. It should be overturned at the earliest opportunity.

      • I like it just the way it is. I can see two things happening. The first is they pushed through legislation, how exactly do you ban the slidefire without potentialy banning all semi automatics. That is going to be messy as hell. The other is just to admit that semi automatic guns are now all capable of 600 RMP until their barrels melt. And in that case be are back to trying to keep our guns. Want bump stocks, get them to open up the NFA. If you can do that, then I know that we can safely have sildefire stocks without the mainstream public turning on semi automatic rifles.

  12. In order to sue the manufacturer using this tactic, the plaintiff should have to prove that the client was harmed by the item in question. Can the attorney provide a preponderance of evidence that the bullet that hit his client was launched from a firearm equipped with a bump stock?

    • Moreover, there is no evidence that the shooter actually used any of the bumpstocks in the attack. The ATF investigation team was denied access to any of the firearms when they attempted to determine which ones were used, and if any had been illegally converted to machine guns. Not a crazy conspiracy theory, just the facts…

  13. “We’re saying you were selling guns that meet the definition of machine guns in violation of federal law, so you don’t get protection,”

    Saying it doesn’t make it true. In a just world, this argument would be laughed out of court, perhaps with sanctions for wasting the court’s time.

  14. I guess the shooters estate wasn’t big enough for all the victims to be compensated.
    The end goal of course is banning of semi auto magic guns no matter the type or caliber. Should Joe win he’ll appoint judges that will allow such a ban to take place.
    As for accuracy, he was firing at a crowd not a specific small target. His goal was to fire often are mass of people. Or at least we guess so because the experts still have no motive.

    Maybe his motive was getting bans on guns passed.

    • I’ve said that many times since the event. The shooter’s objective was to get another AWB implemented. This is why he had so many guns from different manufacturers. To cover the bases. He wanted to scare and shock legislators into action.

      And being a registered Democrat, was also taking reprisals on who he considered to be a Trump voting demographic.

  15. Of course they are not,a bump stock does not make a machine gun regardless of what any one or alphabet agency proclaims by fiat.

  16. The entire investigation over the incident just doesn’t make sense, and never has. If someone wanted to go all out to inflict maximum carnage, why bring two dozen guns? Wouldn’t it make more sense to prepare a handful of quality rifles, then load up a truckload of mags with ammo to have them ready? The only reason more than a single gun would be needed would be if it jammed or overheated, so having half a dozen in reserve would have been ample. Otherwise, you just keep shooting and reloading with fresh mags for as long as you can get away with it. It isn’t logical to expect that you’d need 24 guns because you think the first 23 will fail along the way.

    And there’s still the matter of the second rapid-fire muzzle flash from a few floors before the alleged shooter, caught on cell phone video from at least two individuals. Then the alleged shooter was conveniently killed by gunshot to the head, from a questionable angle.

    • You run into the issue of overheating the barrels . He was planning on dumping enough into the crowd where that would be a real problem.

      • I mentioned that possibility above. Choose a reliable model, get five or six of them for backups or rotation, and load up tons of 60-rd drum mags. After all, Paddock was a wealthy man and had high end Daniel Defense ARs among those found, so money for drum mags wouldn’t have been a problem. Have a tub of ice nearby, and after each mag is emptied, thrust the barrel (muzzle slightly down) into the ice as you swap to the next gun. By the time you’ve gone through all guns, the first is certainly cooled off enough for another mag, etc.

        And if his plan was to handle the issue of overheating without the benefit of a cooling device, I’m having a difficult time imagining why he didn’t simply lock, load, and line up all the guns so he could just burn through all the ammo from start to finish. 23 guns loaded with drum mags would have provided a starting point of at least 1300 rounds, before any reloading.

        The entire situation was horrible, and should never have happened. But the layout of the room and equipment was just not set up in a plausible manner. Anyone who underwent the time and effort to obtain and transport so many guns to that room for the intent of killing as many people as possible across the street would not have set up the layout so haphazardly.

        Then, as I mentioned, there’s the infamous second muzzle flash and the fact that Paddock was offed by an allegedly self-inflicted gunshot that didn’t match the trajectory one would expect from a person holding a gun to his own head.

      • Look again, he was running 100 round shurefire quad stacks. He was just thinking he could blow up the aviation fuel and was messing with that instead of dumping more rounds down range. I think the room was tossed after the fact. What was really scary was he was setting up to do the shooing at Lollapalooza. He would have been at about 300 yards firing into Grant Park. I think that if that would happen, we would be lucky to even have mini14s. Want to talk about democrats dancing in blood. There are close to half a million people at that festival. Best guess would be 200-500 dead depending on how fast Chicago PD could react (they are much better than Vegas cops when the shit hits the fan). But with stampeding and if he brought enough ammo, I could see it getting up to 4 figures. Also dumping hot guns into water is not the best idea in the world. I remember when the shooting first happened and no real facts were known, people were suspecting a water jacket to keep up the fire, turns out the was a easier solution.

        • 1) You know, upon closer inspection of the photo above in the article, I do believe you’re correct. It appears that some of the mags are indeed doubles. Okay, I hereby retract the first portion of my diatribe.

          2) I purposefully worded my suggestion with “ice” instead of “water” precisely because of any potential concerns with liquids, and the fact that ice cubes will present a colder environment for a short duration. True, it will melt into water as the hot barrels are immersed into the tub, but by the time there’s enough liquid to cause any potential problems, there would already be plenty of LE attention (and firepower) coming down on the hotel room anyhow. The entire exercise was somewhat of a one-way ticket to Suicide Town. Of course, I assume that none of us will ever be in such a predicament anyway, so this is all just my opinion on the “investigation” our mighty FBI has yet to announce results for, even after all this time.

        • His “New York” reloads were really the best solution to the overheating issues as long as he was going to be firing from a fixed position. Really sick in the head, but not stupid at all.

  17. The Vegas guy allegedly had the means to aquire NFA items. Why not just buy a transferable minigun and a very long belt of 308?

    • Best guess, paperwork takes to long, you are on ATFs radar (especially a mini-gun), If he was stopped outside of his home state with the guns he would be screwed. Why bother with all that when yo can just go to any gun store and order most of the other stuff on the internet? And you can also train with a slidefire AR-15 at lot more ranges

  18. The problem with the plaintiffs suite is that at the time of the shooting, Bump Stocks were legal add on devices. The ATF had ruled that. Whatever they did to their ruling, post shooting, in inapplicable to the lawsuit. If they want to sue somebody, sue the ATF for their original ruling, since that allowed the limited proliferation of the devices. Bump Fire has been around for years, we did it with semi auto 22’s in the 60’s. It’s a technique, admittedly not a very accurate one, but the technique is still there. All the stocks did was facilitate learning the ammo wasting technique. Banning the stock, does not ban the technique from being learned.

    • Some BS cooked up by the cops and government after they change their stories 3-5 times, the security firm guarding the “hero security guard” was exposed for not having a valid license, as well as the registration its vehicles being out of date by several years. Mhmm, nothing going on at all. That license was updated within HOURS of it hitting the news.

      The guns were the star of the show and IMHO, the “shooter” was already dead before the first shot rang out. All too convenient that every gun, magazine, and feature that the (D) and .gov have wanted banned for decades were all on the stage there.

      All the cameras on the floor it allegedly took place from were turned off of course. IIRC, it took over a year to get any video to be released and at that point it could have easily been staged. Then again, one could have staged video on hand before an incident so I guess that one doesn’t really count unless its a hiccup in planning.

      You don’t take dozens of guns to a mass shooting, you take 1-3 good ones and a lot of ammo. The whole thing still stinks to this day.

      • Oh yea! I remember now. Complete and utter bullshit that they took 2 months to come up with.

        I’m not a conspiracy theorist but that “investigation” had some shady shit happening. Big time.

        Thanks for refreshing my memory.

      • OK, how do you deal with the barrels overheating? Dump 300 rounds down your “good” gun and then tell me how you don’t need anything else.

  19. “The owner of the hotel, MGM Resorts International, reached a sweeping out-of-court settlement last October, agreeing to funnel up to $800 million to the families of the victims.”

    I spend a lot of time in Lost Wages, and this is just one more reason to stay away from MGM hotels, which is what I’ve managed to do for most of my adult life.

    • I did a client conference at the MGM in 99 or 2000.

      It’s like a half a mile from the rooms to the conference center. In dress shoes that sucks.

      I spilled something on my shirt one night and needed a plain, black T-shirt to go with my sport coat. The little shops there had one. That designer that got killed in Miami. Can’t think of his name. 75 dollars for a T-shirt. In 1999 dollars.

  20. Sam I Am says: “In simplest terms, “ex post facto” means “before the fact”, or “before the act”. No it doesn’t. It means after the fact. Quote: “An ex post facto law (corrupted from Latin: ex postfacto, lit. ‘out of the aftermath’) is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law.”

    • Quote: “An ex post facto law (corrupted from Latin: ex postfacto, lit. ‘out of the aftermath’) is a law that retroactively changes the legal consequences (or status) of actions that were committed, or relationships that existed, before the enactment of the law.”

      Good. More explanation only helps.

      (BTW, “simplest terms” means “not a literal translation”)

  21. Bump stocks are stocks. Nothing more, nothing less. And they suck. But if we want them, we should be able to have them.

    I generally do not care about the rest of what was written here. Something something taxation is theft

  22. The cell phone audio of the video in the shooting is around 600-650 RPS, a bump stock with lots of practice can dump a 100 round drum at 900 RPS. It it very hard with a bump stock to do a continuous 100 round dump, most people will get bursts of fire as in the video posted above.
    The rate of fire in the Las Vegas shooting was consistent with the M249 Light Machine Gun, which uses 100 round belts as standard. The pauses between the bursts of fire, about 30 seconds, is the time needed for the barrel to cool and to load another belt. The FBI refused to let the ATF examine the weapons found. Any bump stocks were likely planted, and the M249 LMG removed by the FBI before the ATF was notified.
    And last, with enough practice you don’t even need a bump stock. The title says SBR, but looks like a standard 16″ AR. Go to 30 seconds.

    • Also every here is fully aware you can bump fire a gun. It’s just the slidefire makes it so much more effective. I would argue that a semi auto AR 15 is far more effective than a Tommy gun, but then here we are. Problem is that now we have these new sub 10 lb belt fed machine guns with quick change barrels so the NFA is never going to be opened to new machine guns. Yes I know there are true machine guns out there, but not a lot. Open up the registry and that will change.

  23. Everybody is missing the point here.
    This suit is not just about bump stocks.
    The suit is about calling SEMI-AUTO firearms MACHINEGUNS because purportedly they’re somehow easy to make go full auto and supposedly that makes the manufacturers not covered by the PLCAA law.

  24. A couple of thoughts on this………

    ‘“I am particularly concerned,” Gordon wrote, that attorneys for the gun makers argued they would be immune from liability under state law even if they “manufactured and sold Tommy guns or M-16 rifles to civilians.”’

    If attorneys for gun makers made that argument, then they were just plain stupid. Yes, class 3 dealers can legally sell pre-1986 machine guns – but not new guns. Such sales would definitely not be protected by the Protection of Lawful Commerce In Arms Act, because that would not be lawful commerce.

    Second, this suit may finally give us some answers about the weapons involved. Unless I missed it, we still do not know if the weapons used were illegally modified (I.e. with auto sears) or if bump stocks were used or a combination of the two.

    • The suit could give some answers, but why make the respondents pay for the hours their lawyers will bill?
      That’s 99 44/100% of the reason behind these kinds of suits; To run a manufacturer into bankruptcy or so dire financial straits they can’t stay in business.
      Those folks aren’t made of cash and lawyer’s billing cuts into the cash flow needed to remain solvent.
      The profit margin after overhead for gun manufacturers is surprisingly small and these unscrupulous anti-gun lawyers know it.

      • 100% correct. That is why the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was passed. Right now the issue in this case appears to be a motion to dismiss the case because the firearms were sold legally. The PLCAA protect gun makers, and dealers only if the sales were legal. They like were 100% legal – but the judge must rule on that fact, and i this case he wants to dot every “i” and cross every “t”. Hopefully the case will be dismissed, if not by this judge, on appeal. It’s too bad that the gun makers have to mount a defense, but they likely will not be run out of business.

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