Family of Uvalde shooting victims Sue Meta, Microsoft, Activision and Daniel Defense

JAKARTA – Families of victims of the 2022 Uvalde, Texas elementary school shooting filed two lawsuits on Friday, May 24 against Instagram's parent company Meta Platform Inc., Activision Blizzard and parent company Microsoft , as well as against the arms manufacturer Daniel Defense. They accuse the companies of working together to market dangerous weapons to easily influenced teenagers, like the Uvalde shooters.

The lawsuit alleges that Georgia-based gunmaker Daniel Defense used Instagram and Activision's Call of Duty video game to market its assault rifles to teenagers, while Meta and Microsoft facilitated the strategy with weak supervision and whatever the consequences.

Meta, Microsoft and Daniel Defense did not 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 a similar level of video gaming but with less gun violence than the United States.

“We are deeply saddened and angry at the acts of unreasonable violence,” the group said in a statement. “At the same time, we do not support baseless accusations linking this tragedy to video games, which distract from efforts to focus on key issues and protect against future tragedy.”

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 the school Robb Elementary and jammed himself into a classroom adjacent to dozens of schools. students.

The lawsuit was filed on the anniversary of the two-year massacre by the law firm Koskoff & Bieder, which also reached a $73 million settlement with gunmaker Remington in 2022 on behalf of the children's families died in mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. in 2012.

The first complaint, filed in Los Angeles High Court, accused Meta's Instagram of providing unsupervised channels for gun manufacturers to speak directly to minors, at their homes, at schools, even in the middle of the night, with only symbolic surveillance.

The complaint also alleges that Activision's popular war game Call of Duty created a highly realistic and addictive violent theater, in which teenagers learn to kill with frightening skills and conveniences, using real weapons as a model. for in-game weapons.

The perpetrators of the Uvalde shooting played Call of Duty with, among them, assault rifles made by Daniel Defense, according to a lawsuit, and frequently visited Instagram, where Daniel Defense often advertises.

As a result, the lawsuit said, he became obsessed with obtaining the same gun and used it to commit murder, despite never having fired a gun before. .

The second complaint, filed in Uvalde City District Court, accused Daniel Defense of deliberately directing its advertisements toward teenagers in an attempt to obtain lifetime subscribers.

“There is a direct connection between the actions of these companies and the shooting in Uvalde,” Josh Koskoff, one of the family’s attorneys, said in a statement. “This three-headed monster consciously exposed him to the weapon, conditioning him to see it as a tool to solve his problem and training him to use it.”

Daniel Defense faced another lawsuit filed by the families of several victims. In a 2022 statement, CEO Marty Daniel called such litigation “absurd” and “politically motivated.”

Earlier this week, the victim's family announced a separate lawsuit against nearly 100 state troopers participating in what the U.S. Justice Department deemed a botched emergency response. The family also reached a $2 million settlement with the city of Uvalde. Several other lawsuits against various public institutions are still awaiting a decision.

Tag: call of duty meta platform inc instagram microsoft