JAKARTA - The families of shooting victims at Uvalde Elementary School, Texas, in 2022 filed two lawsuits on Friday, May 24, against Instagram's parent company Meta Platform Inc., Activision Blizzard and parent company Microsoft, as well as armsmaker Daniel Defense. They accuse the companies of working together to market dangerous weapons to easily influenced teens, such as shooters in Uvalde.
The lawsuit alleges that Georgia-based arms manufacturer Daniel Defense used Instagram and Activision's Call of Duty video game to market its assault-style rifles to teenage boys, while Meta and Microsoft facilitated the strategy with weak oversight and regardless of consequences.
Meta, Microsoft, and Daniel Defense have not responded to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association, a lobbying group representing the video game industry, said many other countries had a similar level of video gaming but with fewer gun violence compared to the United States.
"We are deeply saddened and angry with acts of unreasonable violence," the group said in a statement. "At the same time, we do not support baseless accusations linking this tragedy to video games, which distract from efforts to focus on key issues and protect against future tragedy."
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 with a Daniel Defense rifle entered Robb Elementary School and blocked himself in a classroom adjacent to dozens of students.
The lawsuit was filed on the anniversary of the two-year massacre by law firm Koskoff & Bieder, who also reached a $73 million settlement with weapons manufacturer Remington in 2022 on behalf of the families of children who died in mass shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012.
The first lawsuit, filed in the Los Angeles High Court, accused Meta's Instagram of providing unsupervised channels to gun manufacturers to speak directly to minors, at their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night, with only token surveillance.
The complaint also alleges that Activision's popular war game Call of Duty created a very realistic and addictive violent theater, in which teenage boys learn to kill with scary skills and conveniences, using real weapons as a model for weapons in play.
Shooting perpetrators in Uvalde played Call of Duty featuring, among them, assault-style rifles manufactured by Daniel Defense, according to a lawsuit and frequently visiting Instagram, where Daniel Defense often advertises.
As a result, the lawsuit stated that he became obsessed with getting the same weapon and used it to commit murder, although he had never fired a firearm before.
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The second lawsuit, filed in Uvalde City District Court, accused Daniel Defense of deliberately directing his ads to teenage boys in an attempt to get subscribers for life.
"There is a direct line between the actions of these companies and the shootings at Uvalde," Josh Koskoff, one of the family's lawyers, said in a statement. "This three-headed monster consciously exposed him to the weapon, conditioning it to see it as a tool to solve his problem and train him to use it."
Daniel Defense has faced another lawsuit filed by the families of several victims. In a 2022 statement, CEO Marty Daniel called such litigation "absurd" and "politically motivated."
Earlier this week, the victim's family announced a separate lawsuit against nearly 100 state police officers participating in what the US Department of Justice deemed a failed emergency response. The family also reached a $2 million settlement with the city of Uvalde. Several other lawsuits against various public institutions are still awaiting a decision.
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