Uvalde families sue gunmaker, Instagram, Activision over weapons marketing

Many of the family members whose children were killed in the Robb Elementary School mass shooting in Uvalde two years ago are suing Instagram, the maker of the video game "Call of Duty" and an AR-15 manufacturer, claiming the three played a role in enabling the mass shooter who killed 19 children and two adults in Uvalde in 2022.

The wrongful death suits were filed in Texas and California against Meta, Instagram's parent company; Activision, the video game publisher; and Daniel Defense, a weapons company that manufactured the assault rifle used by the mass shooter in Uvalde. The filings came on the second anniversary of the shooting.

A press release sent on Friday by the law offices of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder PC and Guerra LLP said the lawsuits show that, over the past 15 years, the three companies have partnered in a "scheme that preys upon insecure, adolescent boys."

Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder is the same law firm that reached a $73 million settlement with rifle manufacturer Remington in 2022 on behalf of families of children killed in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.

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

Salvador Ramos, the lone gunman in the Robb Elementary massacre, purchased the assault rifle he used in the shooting minutes after he turned 18, according to the release. Days later, he carried out the second worst mass shooting in the country's history, where hundreds of law enforcement officers waited more than an hour before entering the classroom.

The first lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, accuses Meta’s Instagram of giving gun manufacturers “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night,” with only token oversight.

The complaint also alleges that Activision’s popular warfare game Call of Duty “creates a vividly realistic and addicting theater of violence in which teenage boys learn to kill with frightening skill and ease,” using real-life weapons as models for the game’s firearms.

Ramos played Call of Duty – which features, among other weapons, an assault-style rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense, according to the lawsuit - and visited Instagram obsessively, where Daniel Defense often advertised.

As a result, the complaint alleges, he became fixated on acquiring the same weapon and using it to commit the killings, even though he had never fired a gun in real life before.

The second lawsuit, filed in Uvalde County District Court, accuses Daniel Defense of deliberately aiming its ads at adolescent boys in an effort to secure lifelong customers.

“There is a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting,” Josh Koskoff, one of the families’ lawyers, said in a statement. “This three-headed monster knowingly exposed him to the weapon, conditioned him to see it as a tool to solve his problems and trained him to use it.”

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

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

Several other suits against various public agencies remain pending.

Contributing: Reuters