Several Uvalde families are suing Daniel Defense, the gun company whose AR-15 style rifle an 18-year-old gunman used to kill 19 children and two teachers and injure several others at Robb Elementary two years ago, lawyers said.
The family members of victims Friday also filed a separate lawsuit against California-based companies Meta — the parent company of Instagram and Facebook — and Activision, whose best-selling video game “Call of Duty” features Daniel Defense guns.
The lawsuits together will argue that the three companies marketed semi-automatic weapons to the Uvalde gunman before he was 18, accusing them of negligence and wrongful death. The shooter purchased firearms shortly after he turned 18 years old and then used one of those guns to carry out the deadliest school shooting in Texas history.
In Texas, 18-year-olds can legally purchase long guns such as rifles.
Josh Koskoff, an attorney representing the Uvalde families, says there was a direct line between the companies’ conduct and the Uvalde shooting.
“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,” Koskoff said in a statement. “Why? Because, well before he was old enough to purchase it, he was targeted and cultivated online by Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense. 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 lawsuits come on the two-year anniversary of the shooting.
Attorneys argue that Daniel Defense intentionally markets its weapons to adolescents and uses platforms including Instagram and first-person shooter games like “Call of Duty” to promote criminal use of their weapons.
They add that Instagram provides an unsupervised channel to speak directly to adolescent boys because of what attorneys say are flimsy and easily circumvented rules meant to prohibit firearm advertising to children.
The lawsuit against Daniel Defense is expected to be filed in Texas’ 38th District Court in Uvalde County on behalf of 31 family members of the deceased and injured victims. It accuses Daniel Defense of courting the shooter with marketing that lures adolescents into forming an attachment with its brand of AR-15s, particularly its flagship DDM4v7.
The lawsuit against Activision and Meta was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court on behalf of approximately 45 family members of the victims. It accuses the gaming company of desensitizing young men to acts of mass violence and grooming them to seek out weapons like those featured in Call of Duty. While Instagram prohibits the marketing of firearms on its platform, the lawsuit claims Instagram fails to enforce firearm guidelines while rigorously enforcing other types of content guidelines.
[…]
This is not the first lawsuit families have filed against Daniel Defense. Uvalde victims’ families previously filed two lawsuits against the Georgia-based gun manufacturer, alleging that the company intentionally marketed its AR-15 rifles to young males in ways that “encourage the illegal and dangerous misuse” of its weapons.
Daniel Defense has sought to dismiss those lawsuits, which were filed in federal court and remain ongoing.
I count three previous lawsuits filed against Daniel Defense, but perhaps I’m mistaken. The story notes that attorney Koskoff, who is also representing the families that sued multiple DPS officers earlier in the week, was the attorney who led the successful suit filed by Sandy Hook parents against a different gun manufacturer. I’m all in favor of this strategy – honestly, we should be treating these outfits like we treated the tobacco companies in the 80s and 90s – but it’s not clear to me that the legal pathway is as available as it was even a few years ago. I sure hope it is, but we know who’s at the end of the line for this lawsuit, and it’s hard to have any optimism when SCOTUS is involved. We’ll see. Texas Public Radio has more.
I think that the most obscene things that I have ever seen are the personal Christmas cards put out by some members of Congress with their whole families, especially the young children, posing with all their high powered killing devices. What better way to observe the birth of the Prince of Peace? I don’t object to responsible adults owing firearms (although I do have a major issue with the lack of training requirements). I strongly object to this fetishization of firearms. Whether or not Daniel Defense is found legally responsible for their part in this cultural perversion (their ads were quite obscene), they absolutely are morally responsible for their contributions.
I’d love to see some consequences, but I have zero faith in one of the worst Supreme Courts in US History.