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 suing video game makers and social media companies 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 weapons manufacturer Daniel Defense, were named in the lawsuit filed Friday in California.

The lawyers accused the firms of promoting gun culture among “insecure” boys, including the Uvalde school shooter who killed more than 20 students and teachers in 2022 with an AR-15-style assault rifle.

While the exact monetary value of the damages sought has not yet been specified, the legal team is the same team that won a $73 million settlement from Remington over the weapon’s role in the Sandy Hook massacre.

Activision, for its part, issued a statement expressing its “deepest condolences to the families and communities who continue to be affected 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 with an AR-15-style assault rifle went on the rampage at Robb Elementary School in Texas, 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of San Antonio.

It was the deadliest school shooting in America in the past decade since the Sandy Hook school shooting, in which 20 children and six adults were killed by an equally unstable young man with an assault rifle.

The Uvalde shooter, who legally purchased his gun in Texas right after turning 18, posted a photo of his Daniel Defense DDM4V7 rifle on Instagram days before the massacre (above)

Josh Koskoff, the lead attorney for the families of the Uvalde victims, argued that there was “a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting.”

Long before the gunman was old enough to purchase the Daniel Defense-made AR-15-style assault rifle used in the massacre, Koskoff said he was “targeted and cultivated online by Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense.”

The gunman, who bought the gun legally in Texas right after turning 18, posted a photo of his Daniel Defense DDM4V7 rifle on Instagram just 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 following the lawsuit, Activision acknowledged that the Uvalde tragedy was “terrible and heartbreaking in every way,” but denied any culpability.

“Millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to heinous acts,” the company noted.

Last year, researchers at Stanford University discovered Brainstorming lab reviewed 82 medical journal articles that they said “covered all reputable literature and science,” looking for a causal link between video games and violence.

Two teachers and 19 fourth-grade students were killed in the city of Uvalde on May 24, 2022, when a teenage gunman with an AR-15-style assault rifle went on the rampage at Robb Elementary School in Texas, 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of San Antonio. It was the deadliest school shooting in ten years

“Even if we look at the range of actions … from a simple push to an attack with deadly force,” said Stanford psychiatrist Dr. David Dupee, the laboratory’s director, “found no causal relationship in such studies.”

However, a growing body of research, including 2017 research in the journal Social Affective and Cognitive Neuroscience, has found that frequent players of graphically violent video games were “less empathetic” than other gamers.

a related research from 2023 has called for longer-term research, using fMRI brain scanning technology, to compare whether or not continued exposure to violent video games affects ’empathy for pain’.

Neither Instagram’s parent company Meta nor Daniel Defense responded to requests for comment on the lawsuit, according to newswire Agence France-Presse.

Josh Koskoff, the lead attorney for the families of the Uvalde victims, 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-owned app gave Daniel Defense ample opportunity to promote its guns through “organic” content via his own profile and social media influencers.

“Refuse to be a victim,” one of the gunmaker’s Instagram posts declared, next to a photo of a person pulling an assault rifle from the trunk of a car.

The new lawsuit alleges that Meta has essentially allowed firearm manufacturers to market directly to children through these indirect promotional posts, accusing the company of “knowingly” creating “thin, easily circumvented rules” .

The lawsuit described Activision’s “Call of Duty” game franchise as a “sly form of marketing (that) helped cultivate a new, youthful consumer base for the AR-15 assault rifle.”

The lawsuit comes just days after the families of Uvalde reached a $2 million settlement with the city over what the U.S. Department of Justice said were “critical failures” by local police in their response to the shooting during critical moments on 24 May 2022.

After waiting for more than an hour, officers finally shot the gunman and stormed the classroom where he had been hiding in a closet, waiting to ambush police.

School shootings have become a regular occurrence in the United States, where about a third of adults own a firearm and regulations have become permissive against the purchase of even powerful military-style assault rifles.