By Brad Brooks
(Reuters) - Victims of a deadly 2022 shooting attack on a gay nightclub in Colorado have sued local authorities, accusing them of failing to enforce a red flag gun law they say could have prevented the violence.
The two lawsuits were announced on Tuesday, the second anniversary of the Nov. 19, 2022 shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs that killed five people and injured another 25.
Plaintiffs, including victims and some family members of victims, allege that former El Paso County Sheriff Bill Elder and the county's Board of Commissioners failed to use Colorado's red flag law, "despite credible and actionable information about the shooter's escalating threats and violent behavior."
The legislation allows courts to issue orders removing firearms from individuals considered at risk of harming themselves or others.
The El Paso County Sheriff's office and the board of commissioners said they had no comment on the lawsuits.
Red flag laws across the country have been touted by gun safety advocates as crucial tools to prevent mass shootings.
In Colorado, a judge can issue a temporary order that a firearm should be confiscated for up to two weeks until a court hearing is held to determine whether to extend the order up to a year. The state has seen relatively few petitions for such orders since it passed its law in January 2020.
Earlier this year, Anderson Lee Aldrich, the convicted shooter in the Club Q attack, pleaded guilty to federal hate crime and gun charges and received multiple sentences of life in prison without possibility of release.
The most serious crimes to which Aldrich pleaded guilty included charges of wilfully killing someone because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.
Aldrich in 2023 was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty in state court to five first-degree murder counts and 46 attempted murder counts.
He planned and carried out the attack after entering the club armed with a semiautomatic rifle and a handgun during a drag show. The rampage was stopped after two patrons managed to wrest Aldrich's weapons away.
Aldrich was known to law enforcement, having been arrested in 2021. His mother had reported that Aldrich had threatened to detonate a bomb and harm her with multiple weapons, according to a press release from the El Paso County Sheriff's Office. Aldrich's mother declined to testify for the prosecution, and the 2021 case was dismissed.
In the lawsuits, plaintiffs argue that the sheriff "acted recklessly and with conscious disregard" for the risk posed to Club Q patrons by failing to invoke Colorado's red flag law to disarm Aldrich after the 2021 incident.
The county board of commissioners, the lawsuits say, were in the wrong by adopting a resolution opposing the state's red flag statute, "which directly undermined the law's effectiveness."