Uvalde families sue gunmaker, Instagram and Activision

Sign up for The Brief, The Texas Tribune's daily newsletter that keeps readers up to date on the most essential Texas news.

Several Uvalde families are suing Daniel Defense, the gun company whose AR-15-style rifle was used by an 18-year-old gunman to kill 19 children and two teachers and injure several others at Robb Elementary School two years ago, the lawyers said.

Family members of the victims also filed a separate lawsuit Friday against California companies Meta – the parent company of Instagram and Facebook – and Activision, whose best-selling video game “Call of Duty” features the weapons of Daniel Defense.

The entire lawsuit will show that the three companies marketed semi-automatic weapons to the Uvalde shooter before he turned 18, accusing them of negligence and wrongful death. The shooter purchased guns shortly after turning 18, then used one of those weapons to commit the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.

In Texas, 18-year-olds can legally purchase long guns such as rifles.

Josh Koskoff, an attorney representing the Uvalde families, says there was a direct connection between the companies' behavior 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,” Koskoff said in a statement. “Why? Because, long before he was old enough to buy it, he was targeted and cultivated online by Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense. This three-headed monster knowingly exposed him to the weapon, the conditioned him to see it as a tool to solve his problems and trained him to use it.

The lawsuits come on the second anniversary of the shooting.

Lawyers say Daniel Defense intentionally markets its weapons to teenagers and uses platforms such as Instagram and first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty” to promote the criminal use of their weapons.

They add that Instagram provides an unsupervised channel to speak directly to teenagers because of what advocates say are flimsy and easily circumvented rules intended to prohibit gun advertising to children.

The lawsuit against Daniel Defense is expected to be filed in the 38th District Court of Texas in Uvalde County on behalf of 31 family members of the deceased and injured victims. He accuses Daniel Defense of courting the shooter with marketing that entices teenagers to attach themselves to its brand of AR-15, particularly its flagship DDM4v7.

The lawsuit against Activision and Meta was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of approximately 45 family members of the victims. He accuses the gaming company of desensitizing young men to acts of mass violence and preparing them to seek out weapons like those featured in Call of Duty. Although Instagram prohibits the marketing of firearms on its platform, the lawsuit claims that Instagram fails to enforce gun guidelines while rigorously enforcing other types of content guidelines.

The Uvalde families' lawsuit appears to follow a similar model that Koskoff, a Connecticut lawyer, used successfully in his home state, where he helped victims of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2012 to obtain a $73 million settlement in a lawsuit against the manufacturer of the AR-15 style rifle used in that school shooting.

The settlement was widely seen as a setback for the gun industry, which enjoys broad legal immunity from civil suits. A law passed in 2005 by Congress protects gun manufacturers from liability for crimes committed with their weapons. Koskoff's team got around this problem by successfully arguing that the gun company could be sued under a state consumer protection law, through an exception to federal law.

During the Connecticut case, documents were released during the discovery process showing that gun company Remington had a licensing agreement with Activision. It is unclear if such an agreement exists between Daniel Defense and Activision.

A Daniel Defense Instagram post from 2019 reads “Call of Duty Modern Warfare launched today” and shows a photo of the type of rifle used in the Uvalde shooting.

Other Instagram posts from Daniel Defense show videos of young men actively shooting the company's rifle. An Instagram post from 2020 shows an image of someone pulling a gun out of the trunk of their car and the words “refuse to be a victim.”

“Guns companies like Daniel Defense do not act alone,” Koskoff said. “AR-15s were available when many of us were growing up, but we didn't have mass shootings by children. What has changed is that companies like Instagram and Activision are doing more than just enabling gun makers to reach consumers: they are supporting and perpetuating violence against troubled teens.

This is not the first lawsuit filed by families against Daniel Defense. The families of Uvalde victims have already filed two lawsuits against the Georgia-based gunmaker, alleging the company intentionally marketed its AR-15 rifles to young men in a way that “encourages illegal and dangerous misuse.” » of his weapons.

Daniel Defense sought to dismiss those lawsuits, which were filed in federal court and remain pending.

In the two years since the Robb Elementary School shooting, state and local law enforcement has been heavily criticized for their response to the massacre. Hundreds of police officers descended on the school and waited for more than an hour to confront the gunman, who fired indiscriminately into two fourth-grade classrooms.

This botched response was the subject of a report by the U.S. Department of Justice and a scathing investigation by the Texas House Committee. A grand jury convened by Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell could determine whether federal, state and local officers face criminal charges.

On Wednesday, the Uvalde families – represented by Koskoff – filed a lawsuit against 92 Texas Department of Public Safety officers. They also announced a $2 million settlement with the city of Uvalde. At a press briefing the day of that announcement, Koskoff announced that additional lawsuits would be filed on behalf of Uvalde's families, including some lawsuits covering the period leading up to the shooting.

“The focus has rightly been on enforcement,” Koskoff told reporters earlier this week. “And I think it’s appropriate to remember that they are at the end of the road.”

Koskoff noted that the 610-page DOJ report included “not a single page explaining why the shooting occurred in the first place.”

The number of semi-automatic rifles, including AR-15s, produced or imported into the United States has increased significantly since the 1990s. AR-15-style rifles were not used in mass shootings until 2007, according to a database maintained by Mother Jones. In 2022, gunmen used an AR-15 rifle in 67% of the 12 mass killings that year.

The AR-15 was designed in the late 1950s as a military-style rifle. Compared to its predecessors, the AR-15 fired bullets faster and with greater accuracy.

Police officers who responded to the shooting at Robb Elementary School were afraid of the gun and decided not to immediately confront the shooter, according to a Texas Tribune investigation. Instead, the agents waited for a Border Patrol SWAT team based 60 miles away to arrive.

Uvalde families pushed the state Legislature to pass a bill to raise the minimum age to purchase certain semi-automatic rifles from 18 to 21. That bill failed to pass the Republican-controlled Legislature, which has spent years loosening gun laws, making it easier to do so. Texans will get guns in a state whose residents have strong loyalty to the Second Amendment.

Disclosure: Facebook has financially supported The Texas Tribune, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization that is funded in part by donations from its members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial support plays no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list here.

We have big things in store for you at the Texas Tribune Festival, taking place September 5-7 in downtown Austin. Join us for three days of big, bold conversations about politics, public policy, and the news of the day.