Uvalde families take on Instagram and Microsoft over gun marketing

Lina PortmanMay 25, 2024

0 2 minutes read

Families of victims of the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting filed two lawsuits Friday against Instagram Meta parent company Activision Blizzard and its parent company Microsoft and weapons maker Daniel Defense , claiming they cooperated to market dangerous weapons to impressionable teenagers — including the Uvalde shooter.

Wrongful death claims claim Daniel Defense – a Georgia-based gun maker – used Instagram and Activision's Call of Duty video game to market its assault rifles to teenagers, while Meta and Microsoft facilitated strategy with lax oversight and no regard for consequences.

Meta, Microsoft and Daniel Defense did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

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 barricaded himself in nearby classrooms with dozens of people. students.

The complaints were filed on the second anniversary of the massacre by Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, the same law firm that reached a $73 million settlement with rifle maker Remington in 2022 on behalf of the families of children killed in mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School. School in 2012.

The first complaint, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses Meta's Instagram of giving gun manufacturers “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, at their homes, at schools, even in the middle of at night”, with only symbolic surveillance.

The complaint also alleges that Activision's popular war game, Call of Duty, “creates a highly realistic and addictive theater of violence in which teenagers learn to kill with frightening skill and ease,” using real weapons like models for the guns in the game.

The Uvalde shooter played Call of Duty — which includes, among other weapons, an assault rifle made by Daniel Defense, according to the lawsuit — and obsessively visited Instagram, where Daniel Defense often advertised.

As a result, according to the complaint, he became obsessed with acquiring the same gun and using it to commit the murders, even though he had never fired a gun in real life before.

The second complaint, filed in Uvalde County District Court, accuses Daniel Defense of deliberately targeting its advertisements toward teenagers in an effort to attract lifelong customers.

“There is a direct connection between the behavior of these companies and the Uvalde shooting,” Josh Koskoff, one of the families’ attorneys, said in a statement. “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.”

Daniel Défense is already facing other lawsuits filed by the families of certain victims. In a 2022 statement, CEO Marty Daniel called such litigation “frivolous” and “politically motivated.”

Earlier this week, victims' families announced a separate lawsuit against nearly 100 state troopers who participated in what the U.S. Justice Department deemed a botched emergency response. The families also reached a $2 million settlement with the city of Uvalde.

Several other lawsuits against various public agencies remain pending.

Lina Portman

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