According to the lawsuit, the corporations gave the gunman access to the weapon he used.
Those who were killed in the incident that took place at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, have filed a lawsuit against the publisher of Call of Duty, Activision, as well as Meta. They said that the business establishments “knowingly exposed the shooter to the weapon [he used], conditioned him to see it as the solution to his problems, and trained him to use it.” Moreover, the plaintiffs asserted that the firms were “chewing up alienated teenage boys and spitting out mass shooters.”
The plaintiffs in the complaint indicated that the individual responsible for the shooting at Uvalde had played the video game Call of Duty, which featured an assault-style rifle manufactured by Daniel Defense. Additionally, they mentioned that he frequently frequented Instagram, which offered advertisements for the products manufactured by the gunmaker. Additionally, the lawsuit asserted that Instagram provides gun manufacturers with “an unsupervised channel to speak directly to minors, in their homes, at school, and even in the middle of the night.” It was suggested that the gunman was “a poor and isolated teenager” from a tiny town in Texas who had only heard about AR-15s and set his eyes on them because he had been exposed to the weapon through other activities, such as playing Call of Duty and surfing Instagram. Furthermore, it asserted that Meta displayed a more forgiving attitude towards sellers of firearms in comparison to other users who violated its regulations. Despite the fact that Meta restricts the purchase and sale of firearms and ammunition, users have the ability to break the regulation a total of ten times before they are permanently banned from its platforms.
The fact of the matter is that the firearms business and Daniel Defense did not act in isolation. “If it weren’t for Instagram, they would not have been able to communicate with this child,” Attorney Josh Koskoff, who represents the plaintiffs, stated during a press conference. They were unable to put him through the dopamine loop that would have the effect of almost killing a person. Doing so is what Call of Duty is all about. The law firm of Koskoff was the same one that was successful in reaching a settlement with the weapon manufacturer Remington for the amount of $73 million on behalf of the relatives of the victims of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
An Activision spokesperson told The Washington Post and Bloomberg Law that the “Uvalde shooting was horrifying and heartbreaking in every way,” and that the company extends its deepest condolences to the families of the victims. However, the spokesperson also stated that “millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to horrific acts.”