Activision sued by Uvalde school shooting victims and their families

Families of victims killed and injured in Uvalde, Texas, school shooting sue Meta and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare publisher Activision Blizzard for promoting firearms to children. “[Activision is] chewing up insane teenagers and spitting out mass shooters,” attorney Katherine Mesner-Hage wrote in the complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Activision is targeted as a so-called “training camp for mass shooters,” while lawyers call Meta and Instagram “the gun industry’s top advertiser.” The Uvalde victims and their families are also suing Daniel Defense, whose AR-15-style rifle was used by 17-year-old Salvador Ramos to kill 21 people and injure 17 others at Robb Elementary School on May 24 2022, in a separate lawsuit. also filed Friday. Daniel Defense's DDM4v7 rifle, which the Uvalde victims' advocate called a “high-end version of the AR-15,” was highlighted on Call of Duty: Modern Warfareon the opening title page of while also being promoted on Instagram by Daniel Defense. Ramos purchased the gun minutes after his 18th birthday, eight days before the Robb Elementary School shooting.

The lawyer wrote that Ramos was not a casual Call of Duty player, saying he “played obsessively, developed sniper skills, and earned rewards” in the game that required him to “work for hours”. Before downloading Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2021, he played several other versions of the game, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 And Call of Duty: Mobile. Mesner-Hage alleges that Ramos discovered the DDM4v7 rifle simultaneously through Call of Duty and on Instagram. Ramos also reportedly sought out other video game-inspired accessories – “a Red Dot Sight, a smoke grenade, an AR-15 weapon skin, and an EOTech holographic combat sight.”

The trial also included several gruesome details of the attack, including that Ramos approached a teacher and said “good night,” before shooting him in the head – which Mesner-Hage claimed said is something long-standing, Call of Duty character Captain Price is known for saying in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and other games.

“There is a direct link between the behavior of these companies and the Uvalde shooting. Just 23 minutes after midnight, on his 18th birthday, the Uvalde shooter purchased an AR-15 made by a company with a market share of less than 1 percent,” attorney Josh Koskoff wrote in a press release. “Why? Because, long before I was old enough to buy it, it was targeted and cultivated online by Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense. 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.

An Activision spokesperson said academic and scientific research shows “no causal link” between video games and violence. “The Uvalde shooting was horrific and heartbreaking in every way, and we express our deepest condolences to the families and communities who remain impacted by this senseless act of violence,” the spokesperson said. “Academic and scientific research continues to show that there is no causal link between video games and gun violence.”

But attorneys for Uvalde's victims disagree, pointing to the increasing realism of Call of Duty weapons as a marketing tool for gun manufacturers. They also referenced at least five other mass shootings in which Call of Duty was allegedly linked to the shooters, including a shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas. After the shooting, Walmart asked its employees to remove signs from its store referring to violent video games and hunting, but did not stop selling guns.

Indeed, researchers have not found a causal link between video games and gun violence; The Stanford Brainstorm Lab spent months reviewing all studies related to the topic, according to Fortune. There was a link to a vaguely described “assault”, which encompassed a range of actions. These studies still have not found a causal link between games and violence, the researchers wrote. Some video game communities to havehowever, has been linked to right-wing extremism in the United States.

It is also true that video games have weapon likenesses licensed for video games; Electronic Arts abandoned this practice in 2013, for example, but still uses the same types of guns, just without the names. “It's difficult to qualify the extent to which rifle sales have increased as a result of participation in the games,” Ralph Vaughn of Barrett Firearms Manufacturing, whose M82 sniper rifle appeared in the Call of Duty games, told Eurogamer. in 2013. “But video games expose our brand to a young audience who are considered possible future owners.