Exactly two years after the Uvalde school massacre, families of victims Friday filed two (much needed) wrongful death lawsuits in California and Texas against social media giant Meta, Activision — the maker of the popular video game “Call of Duty” — and Daniel Defense, the manufacturer of the AR-15 which the teen gunman used to kill 19 students and two teachers on May 24, 2022, in the Robb Elementary School massacre. The lawsuits were filed by the Connecticut law firm Koskoff Law, which in 2012 secured a settlement against the Remington Arms Co, the manufacturer of the weapon used in the Sandy Hooks massacre.
Friday’s lawsuits claim that Instagram, Activision and Daniel Defense have been “partnering…in a scheme that preys upon insecure, adolescent boys,” attorneys said in a news release. Meta and Activision “enabled and emboldened firearm manufacturers’ efforts to expand the market for their weapons by granting unprecedented, direct and 24/7 access to children.”
Call Of Duty, Instagram and Daniel Defense Liability
According to the lawsuits, the Uvalde gunman downloaded “Call of Duty: Modern Warfare” in November 2021, and had been playing previous iterations of “Call of Duty” since he was 15 years old. The video game prominently features a model of the AR-15, known as DDM4V7, that was used in the shooting, the lawsuits allege.
“Simultaneously, on Instagram, the shooter was being courted through explicit, aggressive marketing,” attorneys said. “In addition to hundreds of images depicting and venerating the thrill of combat, Daniel Defense used Instagram to extol the illegal, murderous use of its weapons.”
The gunman, on his 18th birthday, purchased the AR-15 used in the Uvalde shooting because “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,” Koskoff said in a statement.
On April 27, 2022, attorneys say, the gunman created an account with Daniel Defense and added a DDM4V7 to his online cart. Then on May 16, 2022, just 23 minutes after midnight on his 18th birthday, he purchased the weapon — just eight days before the Uvalde shooting.
The same group of families also said Wednesday they are filing a $500 million federal lawsuit against nearly 100 state police officers who took part in the botched law enforcement response to the shooting, along with former Robb Elementary School principal Mandy Gutierrez and Pete Arredondo, the school district’s police chief who was fired months after the shooting.
I am entirely of the opinion that combat video games are responsible for mass shootings by minimizing, encouraging, promoting, and enabling gun violence, along with antisocial behavior to name a few.
In a statement provided to CBS News, an Activision spokesperson said the “Uvalde shooting was horrendous and heartbreaking in every way, and we express our deepest sympathies to the families and communities who remain impacted by this senseless act of violence. Millions of people around the world enjoy video games without turning to horrific acts.”
This argument shows exactly how the video game industry minimizes the fact that it has knowingly caused hundreds of mass shootings over the past few years, and no less than 26 mass shootings in 2023 alone, and keeps doing so. To them, everything is okay if there is no evidence yet that millions of people are turning into violent psychopaths. The video-game industry seems to have little respect for the life of a few thousand people, simply because by their own admission, they have no intention to stop promoting and enabling gun violence until at least a million people turn into mass shooters.
Instagram’s role is obvious and similar to the intentional encouragement of child pornography. Instagram is chasing ad revenue and won’t stop at anything to get it. Connecting criminals, psychopaths, and gun companies with vulnerable users such as children is precisely how Instagram achieves its business goals in an era where social media engagement is sharply dropping due to privacy violations and exploitation of users content for the purpose of training of AI without users consent.
So in a way, violent video-games are a form of mis and disinformation designed to rationalize mass-scale murder. Just like porn that was initially touted in the last century as a form of liberation, but in reality turned out to be an instrument of misogyny, incurable diseases, modern slavery, and promotion of nonconsensual content for profit.. video games too are promoting ideas that are disguised as an outlet of the imaginary need to act out violence, but in reality are a tool of intellectual and moral decay by diminishing the value of human life and providing ever more justification for violence. Not every user will turn into a psychopath, but looking at the rates of juvenile depression, it is safe to say that the damage is more far-reaching than we are told. Mass shootings are only the tip of the iceberg.