The Nevada supreme court has said gun manufacturers cannot be held liable for deaths in the 2017 mass shooting on the Las Vegas Strip which killed 60, because a state law shields them from liability unless the weapon malfunctions. The parents of a woman among those killed at a packed music festival filed a wrongful death suit against Colt Manufacturing and several other gun manufacturers in July 2019. The Nevada supreme court largely sided with the manufacturers’ argument that Nevada law immunizes them from civil actions, with the only “exception for product liability actions involving design or production defects that cause the firearm to malfunction”. Pickering said the lawsuit was based on a claim of fault “beyond a firearm’s inherent ability to cause harm, that is, the gun companies’ manufacture and distribution of illegal machine guns”. But she said in the 20-page ruling the state law does not limit the manufacturer’s immunity specifically to “legal” firearms.

Source: The Guardian December 05, 2021 04:58 UTC