Police run to cover at the scene of a shooting near the Mandalay Bay resort and casino on the Las Vegas Strip, Oct. 1, 2017. Photo: John Locher

Claiming gun makers of the AR-15 rifle were selling weapons that only the military should use, a Bridgeport-based law firm has filed a lawsuit in Clark County District Court in Nevada on behalf of one of 58 people killed at the Route 91 Harvest country music concert in Las Vegas in October 2017.

Attorneys for Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, the same firm representing families of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre against makers of the AR-15 rifle in Connecticut, filed the lawsuit Wednesday morning.

The suit lists 16 defendants, including West Hartford-based Colt's Manufacturing Company LLC, the lead defendant and maker of one of the AR-15s that Steven Paddock used in the attack.

Koskoff attorney Katie Mesner-Hage told the Connecticut Law Tribune Wednesday that Paddock used weapons from eight named defendants. She said three retail shops and five other affiliated corporate entities were also named as defendants.

The Connecticut law firm is representing the family of Seattle resident Carrie Parsons, a 31-year-old staffing agency employee who was killed in the massacre.

The crux of the lawsuit is that the companies allegedly violate long-standing federal law outlawing the sale of automatic weapons.

“The AR-15 has the same DNA of automatic fire and was designed for the military and not the public,” Mesner-Hage said. “These weapons should not have been sold. The defendants knew better. They knew they were violating federal law, and sold them anyway.”

The lawsuit states the AR-15s were made specifically for the U.S. military and that the weapons used in the Las Vegas shooting retain the core design features of the military model, with the exception for the ability of a user to select automatic fire. The suit alleges gun makers were fully aware of the alleged ease with which users can engage the automatic capacity of the weapons through shooting techniques, simple tool work or simple modifications, including the bump stocks used in the shooting.

The lawsuit states that “with a reckless lack of regard for public safety, defendant manufacturers courted buyers by advertising their AR-15s as military weapons and signaling the weapon's ability to be simply modified.”

Colt's Manufacturing did not respond to several requests for comment through its corporate headquarters, and none of the 16 defendants had attorneys representing them in the case.

Meanwhile, attorney Josh Koskoff said in a press release: “Since 1934, federal law has reflected the one gun-related area that politicians, the public and even the NRA have historically agreed on: that automatic weapons—including weapons that can be easily modified to shoot automatically—are for the battlefield and pose too grave a threat to be sold to civilians.”

Ann-Marie Parsons, whose daughter died in the shooting, called for action against gun makers.

“Someone has to stand up and tell gun companies that making a gun that can be easily modified into a machine gun is not okay,” she said in the press release. “They need to know that they will be held accountable for their profiteering and for the devastation they wreak on innocent victims and their families.”

The lawsuit seeks special, general and punitive damages.

Also representing the family are Reno, Nevada, solo practitioner Matthew Sharp and Richard Friedman of Friedman Rubin in Washington state.

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