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Families of Uvalde victims sue Call of Duty maker - claiming video game inspired school shooter and promoted AR-15s
The families of the Uvalde shooting victims are taking video game-makers and social media companies to court over claims they inspired the massacre.
Activision, the company that makes the Call of Duty game franchise, Microsoft, which makes the Xbox video game console, as well as Facebook's parent company Meta and gun manufacturer Daniel Defense, were named in the lawsuit filed in California on Friday.
The lawyers accused the firms of promoting gun culture to 'insecure' boys, including Uvalde school shooter who killed more than 20 students and teachers with an AR-15 style assault rifle in 2022.
While the exact monetary value of the damages sought has not yet been specified, the legal team is the same that won a $73 million settlement from Remington over its gun's role in the Sandy Hook massacre.
Attorneys who won a $73 million settlement from Remington over its gun's role in the Sandy Hook massacre are now taking on video game-makers and social media: Activision, makers of the Call of Duty series, as well as Instagram's parent company Meta, are named in the new suit
For its part, Activision released a statement expressing its 'deepest sympathies to the families and communities who remain impacted by this senseless act of violence.'
But, the game maker added, 'Academic and scientific research continues to show that there is no causal link between video games and gun violence.'
Two teachers and 19 fourth grade children were killed in the city of Uvalde on May 24, 2022 when a teenage gunman went on a rampage with an AR-15 style assault rifle at Robb Elementary School in Texas, 80 miles west of San Antonio.
It was the deadliest school shooting in America in the decade since the Sandy Hook school shooting — in which 20 children and six adults were killed by a similarly unstable young man with an assault rifle.
The Uvalde shooter, who bought his weapon legally in Texas right after turning 18, posted a photo of his Daniel Defense DDM4V7 rifle to Instagram days before the massacre (above)
Josh Koskoff, the lead attorney for the Uvalde victims families, argued that there was 'a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting,'
Well before the gunman was old enough to purchase the Daniel Defense-made, AR-15-style assault rifle used in the mass killing, according to Koskoff, 'he was targeted and cultivated online by Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense.'
The gunman, who bought the weapon legally in Texas right after turning 18, posted a photo of his Daniel Defense DDM4V7 rifle to Instagram days before the massacre.
'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,' Koskoff said.
In its statement responding to the suit, Activision acknowledged that the tragedy at Uvalde 'horrendous and heartbreaking in every way' but denied any culpability.
'Millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to horrific acts,' the company noted.
Last year, researchers with Stanford University's Brainstorm Lab reviewed 82 medical journal articles that they said 'encompass all the reputed literature and scholarship' hunting for a causal relationship between video games and violence.
Two teachers and 19 fourth graders were killed in the city of Uvalde on May 24, 2022 when a teenage gunman went on a rampage with an AR-15 style assault rifle at Robb Elementary School in Texas, 80 miles west of San Antonio. It was the deadliest school shooting in a decade
'Even when considering the range of actions [...] from a simple push all the way up to assault with deadly force,' Stanford psychiatrist Dr. David Dupee, the lab's director, said, 'such studies did not find a causal link.'
However, a growing number of studies, including 2017 research in the journal Social Affective and Cognitive Neuroscience, has determined that frequent players of graphically violent video games were 'less empathetic' than other gamers.
A related 2023 study has called for longer-term research, involving brain-scanning fMRI technology, to compare whether or not persistent exposure to violent video games has an impact on 'empathy for pain.'
Neither Instagram's parent firm, Meta, nor Daniel Defense has responded to requests for comment about the lawsuit, according to newswire Agence France-Presse.
Josh Koskoff, the lead attorney for the Uvalde victims families, argued that there was 'a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting'
Despite Instagram's platform-wide ban on firearms advertising, the lawsuit argues that the Meta-owner app gave Daniel Defense ample opportunity to promote its weapons through 'organic' content via its own profile and social media influencers.
'Refuse to be a victim,' one of the gun-maker's Instagram posts declared, alongside a photo of a person pulling an assault-style rifle from the trunk of a car.
The new lawsuit contends that Meta has, in effect, permitted firearms manufacturers to market directly to children through these indirect promotional posts, accusing the company of 'knowingly' putting forth 'flimsy, easily circumvented rules.'
The suit described Activision's 'Call of Duty' game franchise as a 'cunning form of marketing [that] has helped cultivate a new, youthful consumer base for the AR-15 assault rifle.'
The suit comes just days after Uvalde families reached a $2 million settlement with the city over what the US Department of Justice found were 'critical failures" by local police in their response to the shooting during critical moments on May 24, 2022.
After waiting more than an hour, officers eventually shot and killed the gunman, storming the classroom where he had hid in a closet waiting to ambush police.
School shootings have become a regular occurrence in the United States, where roughly one third of adults own a firearm and regulations have grown permissive on the purchasing even powerful military-style assault rifles.