Club Q Shooting Survivors File Lawsuit Against Club, Police

The Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs sparked another gun control debate, but it was also a prime example of gun control failing. After all, the shooter had reportedly kidnapped a family member and made a bomb threat. Despite that, a red flag order was not sought.

And we know how that worked out.

Now, survivors of the massacre have filed a lawsuit.

Survivors of the Club Q mass shooting in Colorado Springs have filed lawsuits against the bar and the El Paso county sheriff’s office, claiming that their “deliberate inaction” helped facilitate the 2022 attack that took five lives.

The two lawsuits were filed Sunday by both survivors of the shooting and family members of those who were killed. The suit against the sheriff’s office, via The Associated Press, asserts that the then-sheriff and commissioner’s could have prevented the shooting if they had enforced a 2019 red flag law.

The sheriff’s office refused to enforce the law, which allows them to temporarily take someone’s firearm if they are deemed a threat to themselves or others, despite the shooter being arrested a year prior for allegedly kidnapping and threatening to kill their grandparents. Anderson Lee Aldrich, now 24, also collected materials used to make bombs, as well as firearms and ammunition.

The lawsuit seeks to use the county’s Second Amendment Sanctuary status as the focal point of the lawsuit. “This deliberate inaction allowed the shooter continued access to firearms, directly enabling the attack on Club Q,” the lawsuit alleges.

However, there are a few hurdles that any such lawsuit would have to deal with. First and foremost is that law enforcement has no duty to protect. You can’t successfully sue them because they didn’t take actions that may have resulted in people being hurt or killed. If Scot Peterson in Parkland can avoid a lawsuit on those grounds despite literally doing everything wrong while a shooting was taking place in a school he was charged with protecting, I think they’re going to have a hard time winning this one.

Especially since there is no requirement to seek a red flag order for anyone.

They’re also suing the bar in a separate lawsuit, arguing that despite advertising itself as a “safe space” for LGBT patrons, they didn’t have enough security. This one isn’t quite as cut-and-dried in my mind, but I also think this one is going to lose.

The term “safe space” has been bandied about for years now to mean a place where one is free of judgment and perceived persecution. It’s never meant that it would also be a physical fortress against someone who wants to physically harm people inside that “safe space.” I don’t know that it was possible to have that much security, actually. Not realistically, anyway.

I get that people who survived that night aren’t satisfied with the shooter serving the rest of his existence in prison. That’s generally, at best, a good start. But this really looks like some attorney got hold of them and convinced emotionally fragile people to sue literally everyone they possibly can all because we have the benefit of hindsight. It’s also possible that the lawsuit against the sheriff was prompted by anti-gun activists who want to scare law enforcement into using the law whenever it’s remotely possible and not using any discretion of their own.

We’re going to have to see if I called it on these lawsuits, and the fact that this is in Colorado rather than a sane state may well play a factor in it turning out I’m wrong. As I said, we’ll just have to see.