On Friday, May 24, 2024, attorney Josh Koskoff announced that families of the victims of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting were suing Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of the weapon used in the attack, Activision, the Microsoft subsidiary which publishes Call of Duty, as well as Facebook and Instagram parent, Meta.
The school shooting, which occurred at Robb Elementary when an 18-year-old male killed 19 students and two teachers, is one of the deadliest in United States history.
The wrongful death suits allege that the three companies participate in the grooming and radicalization of young men into school shooters.
"Just 23 minutes after midnight on his 18th birthday, the Uvalde shooter bought an AR-15 made by a company with a market share of less than one percent. Why? Because, well before he was old enough to purchase it, he was targeted and cultivated online by Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense," said Koskoff, according to Texas Public Radio. "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."
The attorney, who also represented the families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, further argued that video games, such as Call of Duty, need to cease “training and habituating kids to kill,” while criticizing Instagram for allegedly allowing gun companies such as Daniel Defense to market AR-15s to children.
Earlier, on Wednesday, Koskoff announced that the city of Uvalde had settled with the families, paying them a total of $2 million.
On that same occasion, he announced that the families were suing nearly 100 Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers, and the school’s then-principal Mandy Gutierrez and school district police chief Pedro Arredondo. According to the Texas Tribune, the 92 Texas DPS officers, who arrived at the school, waited 77 minutes before confronting the gunman.
