Families of Uvalde school shooting victims sue Microsoft, Meta and gun maker | Gun violence news

Family members of victims killed in a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, have filed two wrongful death lawsuits: one against the firearms manufacturer and the other against two technology companies, Meta and Microsoft, for their alleged role in marketing the weapon used.

Friday’s two proceedings came on the second anniversary of the school shooting, one of the deadliest in U.S. history.

The shooter, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, attacked Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022 and killed 19 children and two teachers, leaving 17 more injured.

The defendant in the first lawsuit, filed in Uvalde County District Court, is Daniel Defense, a Georgia-based gun manufacturer that produced the rifle used by the shooter.

The second lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, targets Meta, owner of the social media platform Instagram, and video game company Activision Blizzard, a subsidiary of Microsoft.

The complaint alleges that Activision’s first-person shooter Call of Duty played a key role in shaping the shooter mindset.

He pointed out that the game bases its weapons on real-life models and that the shooter has been playing since he was 15 years old.

Call of Duty “creates a vividly realistic and addictive theater of violence in which teenagers learn to kill with frightening skill and ease,” the lawsuit states.

This, in turn, led the attacker to look for the gun he used in the video game as soon as he turned 18, according to the lawsuit.

It also alleges that the shooter consumed pro-gun marketing on Instagram, which reinforced the violent images he saw in the video game.

“At the same time, on Instagram, the shooter was being courted through explicit and aggressive marketing,” the families said in a statement.

“In addition to hundreds of images depicting and venerating the thrill of combat, Daniel Defense used Instagram to exalt the illegal and murderous use of its weapons.”

The lawsuit accuses Instagram of failing to exercise adequate oversight over its platform, thus allowing gun sellers to have “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night.”

In their testimony, the families allege that Daniel Defense and the two technology companies were involved together in a “scheme that preys on insecure teenage boys.”

“There is a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting,” said Josh Koskoff, an attorney representing the families.

“This three-headed monster consciously exposed him to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as a tool to solve his problems, and trained him to use it.”

Koskoff’s firm, Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, previously represented the families of victims killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut, reaching a $73 million settlement with gun manufacturer Remington in 2022.

Daniel Defense already faces other lawsuits related to the shooting in Uvalde. In an appearance before the US Congress in 2022, the company’s CEO, Marty Daniels, denounced the attack as “pure evil”.

In a statement that same year, however, Daniels also called similar lawsuits against companies like his “frivolous” and “politically motivated.”

Activision also condemned the Uvalde shooting, saying it was “horrific and heartbreaking in every way.”

“We express our deepest condolences to the families and communities who continue to be affected by this senseless act of violence,” he said in a statement.

But, he added, “millions of people around the world enjoy video games without resorting to horrible acts.”

A video game industry lobby group, the Entertainment Software Association, has also pointed out that people in other countries play video games without resorting to the levels of violence seen in the US.

“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 gaming, which undermines efforts to focus on the basic issues at hand and protect against future tragedies.”

Gun ownership is a prominent part of U.S. culture, with the Second Amendment to the country’s Constitution protecting the right to “keep and bear Arms.”

Earlier this week, the families of the Uvalde victims reached a $2 million settlement with the small Texas town after the Justice Department found “cascading failures” in the way authorities responded to the shooting due to to training and communication problems.

A separate federal lawsuit was filed Wednesday against the 100 state police officers involved in responding to the shooting.