Uvalde parents and school shooting victims sue Activision
Families of victims killed and injured in an Uvalde, Texas school shooting are suing Meta and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare publisher Activision Blizzard for promoting guns to kids. “[Activision is] chewing up alienated teenage boys and spitting out mass shooters,” attorney Katherine Mesner-Hage wrote in the complaint filed Friday in Los Angeles Superior Court.
Activision is being targeted as an alleged “training camp for mass shooters,” while attorneys call out Meta and Instagram as “the firearm industry’s best advertiser.” The Uvalde victims and their families are also suing Daniel Defense, whose AR-15 style rifle was used by 17-year-old Salvador Ramos to kill 21 people and injure 17 others at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in a separate lawsuit also filed Friday. Daniel Defense’s DDM4v7 rifle, which the Uvalde victims’ lawyer called “an upscale version of the AR-15,” was highlighted on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare’s opening title page while also being promoted on Instagram by Daniel Defense. Ramos purchased that weapon minutes after his 18th birthday, which was eight days before the shooting at Robb Elementary School.
The lawyer wrote that Ramos was not a casual Call of Duty player, saying he “played obsessively, developed skill as a marksman, and obtained rewards” in the game that required him to “grind for hours on end.” Before downloading Call of Duty: Modern Warfare in 2021, he played several other versions of the game, including Call of Duty: Black Ops 3 and Call of Duty: Mobile. Mesner-Hage alleges that Ramos was introduced to the DDM4v7 rifle simultaneously through Call of Duty and on Instagram. Ramos also allegedly searched for other accessories inspired by video games — “a Red Dot Sight, a smoke grenade, an AR-15 weapon skin, and an EOTech holographic battle sight.”
The lawsuit also included several gruesome details of the attack, including that Ramos approached a teacher and said “good night,” before shooting her in the head — something
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