Parents of woman killed in ’17 Vegas massacre sue gun firms

LAS VEGAS — The father of a young woman killed in the 2017 Las Vegas massacre said Wednesday his family is blaming gun manufacturers for their daughter’s death.

“Someone murdered our daughter,” said James Parsons, whose 31-year-old daughter Carrie Parsons was one of 58 people killed when a gunman sprayed gunfire from a high-rise hotel. “Someone should be held accountable for that.”

A wrongful death lawsuit filed Tuesday targets Colt and seven other gun manufacturers, along with gun shops in Nevada and Utah, arguing their weapons are designed to be easily modified to fire like automatic weapons.

The lawsuit is the latest case to challenge a federal law shielding gun manufacturers from liability. It charges that gun-makers marketed the ability of the AR-15-style weapons to be easily modified to mimic machine guns and fire continuously, violating both a state and federal ban on automatic weapons.

Parsons and his wife, Ann-Marie, argue in the lawsuit that the firearms are “thinly disguised” machine guns that the manufacturers knew could be easily modified, even without the use of a “bump stock,” an attachment used by the Las Vegas gunman that allowed him to fire in rapid succession.

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

The lawsuit charges the manufacturers showed a “reckless lack of regard for public safety” by advertising the firearms “as military weapons and signaling the weapon’s ability to be simply modified.”