Families of the victims from the 2022 Uvalde, Texas shooting are now suing social media giant Meta and a video game maker.
According to the lawsuits, the companies promoted deadly weapons to a generation of “socially vulnerable” young men, including the shooter who killed 19 children and two teachers during the attack.
The lawsuits claim that Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense have been “partnering in a scheme that preys upon insecure, adolescent boys”, attorneys said.
“There is a direct line between the conduct of these companies and the Uvalde shooting,” the statement said. “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.”
According to the suit, the gunman had been playing Call of Duty, a war-based video game, since he was 15 years old.
A few months following the tragedy, Uvalde’s school district pulled its embattled campus police force off the job following a wave of outrage over the hiring of a former state trooper who was part of the hesitant law enforcement response during the shooting.
School leaders also put two members of the district police department on administrative leave, one of whom chose to retire instead, according to a statement released at the time by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. Remaining officers were to be reassigned to other jobs in the district.
Brett Cross, whose 10-year-old son Uziyah Garcia was among the victims, had been protesting outside the Uvalde school administration building at the time, demanding accountability over officers allowing the gunman with an AR-15-style rifle to remain in a fourth-grade classroom for more than 70 minutes.
