Families of those killed in the 2022 Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting filed two lawsuits on Friday against the gun manufacturer Daniel Defence, Activision Blizzard and its parent Microsoft, and Instagram, alleging they worked together to sell lethal weapons to impressionable teenagers like the Uvalde shooter.

The wrongful death lawsuits contend that Daniel Defence, a gun manufacturer located in Georgia, marketed its assault-style rifles to teenage boys using Activision’s Call of Duty and Instagram, and that Meta and Microsoft enabled the tactic with scant oversight and disregard for the repercussions.

Requests for comment from Meta, Microsoft, and Daniel Defence were not immediately answered.

According to a spokesman for the Entertainment Software Association, a lobbying organisation that represents the video game industry, many other nations have comparable rates of video game consumption and lower rates of gun violence than the US.

The organisation released a statement saying, “We are saddened and outraged by senseless acts of violence.” “At the same time, we discourage baseless accusations linking these tragedies to video gameplay, which detract from efforts to focus on the root issues in question and safeguard against future tragedies.”

On May 24, 2022, an 18-year-old gunman with a Daniel Defence rifle invaded Robb Elementary School and locked himself inside neighbouring classrooms containing dozens of youngsters, killing 19 children and two teachers in one of the bloodiest school shootings in history.

Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, the same legal team that in 2022 achieved a $73 million settlement with firearm maker Remington on behalf of relatives of children slain in the tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, filed the complaints on the second anniversary of the atrocity.

It’s amazing.

Bringing the first legal action against Meta, Instagram is said to have provided gun manufacturers with “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, even in the middle of the night,” with no monitoring, according to the complaint filed in Los Angeles Superior Court.

Additionally, using real-world guns as models for the game’s armaments, the lawsuit claims that Activision’s well-known combat game Call of Duty “creates a vividly realistic and addicting theatre of violence in which teenage boys learn to kill with frightening skill and ease.”

The complaint claims that the gunman from Uvalde played Call of Duty, which includes an assault-style rifle made by Daniel Defence, among other weapons, and that he also compulsively frequented Instagram, where Daniel Defence frequently posted advertisements.

The accusation claims that even though he had never shot a pistol in real life before, he grew obsessed with getting the same weapon and using it to murder others.

In the second case, which was submitted to the Uvalde County District Court, Daniel Defence is charged with intentionally targeting teenage males with the goal of gaining lifetime clients.

In a statement, one of the families’ attorneys, Josh Koskoff, stated that “there is a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting.” “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.”

Families of certain victims have already launched additional claims against Daniel Defence. CEO Marty Daniel referred to this type of lawsuit as “frivolous” and “politically motivated” in a statement released in 2022.

The victims’ relatives filed a second complaint earlier this week against about a hundred state police officers involved in what the U.S. Justice Department determined to be a poorly executed emergency response. Additionally, the families and the city of Uvalde came to a $2 million settlement.

(Adapted from MoneyControl.com)

Categories: Geopolitics, Strategy, Uncategorized