Families of Uvalde school shooting victims sue Meta, Microsoft, gunmaker
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[May 25, 2024]
By Joseph Ax
(Reuters) - Families of the victims of the 2022 elementary school
shooting in Uvalde, Texas, filed two lawsuits on Friday against
Instagram's parent company Meta, Activision Blizzard and its parent
Microsoft and the gunmaker Daniel Defense, claiming they cooperated to
market dangerous weapons to impressionable teens such as the Uvalde
shooter.
Together, the wrongful death complaints argue that Daniel Defense – a
Georgia-based gun manufacturer – used Instagram and Activision's video
game Call of Duty to market its assault-style rifles to teenage boys,
while Meta and Microsoft facilitated the strategy with lax oversight and
no regard for the consequences.
Meta, Microsoft and Daniel Defense did not immediately respond to
requests for comment.
A spokesperson for the Entertainment Software Association, a lobbying
group representing the video game industry, said many other countries
have similar levels of video game playing but less gun violence than the
United States.
"We are saddened and outraged by senseless acts of violence," the group
said in a statement. "At the same time, we discourage baseless
accusations linking these tragedies to video gameplay, which detract
from efforts to focus on the root issues in question and safeguard
against future tragedies."
In one of the deadliest school shootings in history, 19 children and two
teachers were killed on May 24, 2022, when an 18-year-old gunman armed
with a Daniel Defense rifle entered Robb Elementary School and
barricaded himself inside adjoining classrooms with dozens of students.
The complaints were filed on the two-year anniversary of the massacre by
Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, the same law firm that reached a $73 million
settlement with rifle manufacturer Remington in 2022 on behalf of
families of children killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook
Elementary School in 2012.
The first lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses Meta's
Instagram of giving gun manufacturers "an unsupervised channel to speak
directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the
night," with only token oversight.
The complaint also alleges that Activision's popular warfare game Call
of Duty "creates a vividly realistic and addicting theater of violence
in which teenage boys learn to kill with frightening skill and ease,"
using real-life weapons as models for the game's firearms.
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Memorial crosses stand in front of Robb Elementary School, as U.S.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announces the results of a review
into the law enforcement response to a 2022 mass shooting in Uvalde,
Texas, U.S., January 18, 2024. REUTERS/Kaylee Greenlee Beal/ File
Photo
The Uvalde shooter played Call of Duty – which features, among other
weapons, an assault-style rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense,
according to the lawsuit – and visited Instagram obsessively, where
Daniel Defense often advertised.
As a result, the complaint alleges, he became fixated on acquiring
the same weapon and using it to commit the killings, even though he
had never fired a gun in real life before.
The second lawsuit, filed in Uvalde County District Court, accuses
Daniel Defense of deliberately aiming its ads at adolescent boys in
an effort to secure lifelong customers.
"There is a direct line between the conduct of these companies and
the Uvalde shooting," Josh Koskoff, one of the families' lawyers,
said in a statement. "This three-headed monster knowingly exposed
him to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as a tool to solve his
problems and trained him to use it."
Daniel Defense is already facing other lawsuits filed by families of
some victims. In a 2022 statement, CEO Marty Daniel called such
litigation "frivolous" and "politically motivated."
Earlier this week, families of the victims announced a separate
lawsuit against nearly 100 state police officers who participated in
what the U.S. Justice Department has concluded was a botched
emergency response. The families also reached a $2 million
settlement with the city of Uvalde.
Several other suits against various public agencies remain pending.
(Reporting by Joseph Ax and Katie Paul in New York and Stephen
Nellis in San Francisco, Editing by Deepa Babington)
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