Families victims killed in school shooting in Uvalde, Texasfiled two wrongful death lawsuits: one against the gun manufacturer and another against two technology companies, Meta and Microsoft, for their alleged role in marketing the gun used.
Friday’s two trials took place on the second anniversary of the school shootingone of the deadliest in American history.
The shooter, Salvador Ramos, 18, attacked Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022 and killed him. 19 children and two teachersleaving 17 others injured.
The defendant in the first lawsuit, filed in Uvalde County District Court, is Daniel Defense, a Georgia-based gun manufacturer that produced the rifle used by the shooter.
The second lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, targets Meta, owner of the social media platform Instagram, and video game company Activision Blizzard, a Microsoft subsidiary.
The complaint alleges that Activision’s first-person shooter Call of Duty played a key role in shaping the shooter’s mindset.
He pointed out that the game bases its weapons on real-life models and that the shooter has been playing the game since he was 15 years old.
Call of Duty “creates a highly realistic and addictive theater of violence in which teenagers learn to kill with frightening skill and ease,” the lawsuit says.
This led the attacker to search for the gun he used in the video game as soon as he turned 18, according to the complaint.
It also alleges that the shooter consumed pro-gun marketing on Instagram that reinforced the violent images he saw in the video game.
“Simultaneously, on Instagram, the shooter was being courted through explicit and aggressive marketing,” the families said in a statement.
“In addition to hundreds of images depicting and venerating the thrill of combat, Daniel Defense used Instagram to tout the illegal and deadly use of his weapons.”
The lawsuit accuses Instagram of failing to exercise adequate oversight over its platform, allowing gun sellers to have “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, at home, at school, even in the middle of the night “.
In their statement, the families allege that Daniel Defense and the two technology companies jointly engaged in a “plan that preys on precarious teenagers.”
“There is a direct connection between the behavior of these companies and the Uvalde shooting,” said Josh Koskoff, an attorney representing the families.
“This three-headed monster knowingly exposed him to the weapon, conditioned him to view it as a tool to solve his problems, and trained him to use it.”
Koskoff’s firm, Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, previously represented the families of victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, ultimately reaching a $73 million settlement with the gun maker Remington in 2022.
Daniel Défense is already faced other lawsuits in connection with Shooting in Uvalde. During an appearance before the US Congress in 2022, the company’s CEO Marty Daniels denounced the attack as “pure evil”.
However, in a statement that same year, Daniels also called similar lawsuits against companies like his “frivolous” and “politically motivated.”
Activision also condemned the Uvalde shooting, calling it “horrific and heartbreaking in every way.”
“We express our deepest condolences to the families and communities who remain affected by this senseless act of violence,” he said in a statement.
But, he adds, “millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to horrible acts.”
A lobbying group for the video game industry, the Entertainment Software Association, has also pointed out that people in other countries play video games without resorting to the levels of violence seen in the United States.
“We are saddened and outraged by these senseless acts of violence,” the group said in a statement.
“At the same time, we discourage baseless accusations linking these tragedies to video gaming, which undermine efforts to focus on the root issues at hand and guard against future tragedies. »
Gun ownership is an important part of American culture, with the Second Amendment to the country’s Constitution protecting the right to “keep and bear arms.”
Earlier this week, the families of the Uvalde victims reached an agreement $2 million settlement with the small Texas town, after the Justice Department found “cascading failures” in the way law enforcement responded to the shooting, due to training and communication issues.
A separate federal lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the 100 state troopers involved in the case. response to the shooting.
