The lawsuits were filed two years to the day after the Uvalde elementary school shooting that left 21 people dead.
Topline
Families of the victims of the 2022 Uvalde school shooting are suing a gun manufacturer, Instagram parent Meta and the Microsoft-controlled maker of video game franchise “Call of Duty,” accusing the companies of promoting the gun that was used to kill 19 students and two teachers in Texas.Key Facts
One of the suits, filed in California two years to the day after the deadly shooting, lists Meta and “Call of Duty”’ parent Activision (which was acquired by Microsoft), while a separate suit also filed by family members of the victims lists defendant Daniel Defense, the maker of the AR-15-style gun that was used in the Uvalde shooting.
Plaintiffs in the California suit claim Activision and Meta “have aided and abetted firearm manufacturers’ efforts to expand the market for their weapons by granting unprecedented, direct, 24/7 access to children.”
Specifically, they claim Activision is in the “business of training adolescents to become gunmen,” citing the company’s popular first-person shooter franchise “Call of Duty,” while plaintiffs say Meta provides an “unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors,” through Instagram, with “flimsy” and “easily circumvented rules that ostensibly prohibit firearm advertising.”
The lawsuit claimed the Uvalde shooter downloaded “Call of Duty” and played it “obsessively,” and argued he discovered Daniel Defense rifles by playing the game and seeing ads on Instagram, which it said he had an “unhealthy, likely obsessive, relationship with.
