Tess's parents were once excited about social networks. The 10 -year -old boy from Uvalde, Texas, wanted to be famous to Tiktok. He used to dance, sing and imitate popular trends in his videos, with the mother Veronica and Papa Jerry watching their habits online.
But then Tess was shot dead at Robb Elementary School in 2022, one of the 19 children and two teachers killed by a former student.
Since then, as the details of the personal life of the shooter have become public, the bushes and a handful of other Uvalde families have believed that their exposure to the content of weapons online and in video games led to the tragedy.
Jerry and Veronica Mata are in front of the Spring Street Justice Palace on July 17 in Los Angeles. After her daughter Tess was killed in the shooting at school in Uvalde, Texas, the couple is demanding a goal, Activision and Daniel Defense in an attempt to challenge social networks and videogame marketing that, they say, she urged the shooter to commit violence.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
They are now demanding three companies that alleged beneficiaries of the violent fantasies that led to the death of their children. The defendants include the manufacturer of “Call of Duty”, a game of military shooters in the first person where they say that Salvador Ramos, 18, found a virtual version of an AR-15 of the Daniel defense brand that he used in the attack. They are also demanding Meta, claiming that Ramos found ads for the weapon that promoted violence on Instagram.
The Matas and three other families in Uvalde will travel more than 1,200 miles this week to face the companies in the Superior Court of the Los Angeles County, where they have presented claims for negligence, helping and inciting and unjustification of death.
“They glorify these weapons. They made them attractive to young children wanting to buy these weapons, and children that young people are so receptive to this kind of thing,” Veronica said kills The Times.
Activision, the video game developer based in Santa Monica, has requested the dismissal, arguing that the 1st amendment protects “Call of Duty” as a work of art. Meta has also struggled to be launched in the case, pointing out the well -established jurisprudence that protects social media platforms from responsibility for the third party content published by users and advertisers.
If the case income could be decided at an audience on Friday in the center of Los Angeles
Jerry Mata has dog label necklaces of his daughter Tess, one of the 19 students killed at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, in 2022.
(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)
Families allege “Call of Duty”, one of the best -stored video game franchises in the world, encouraged violence by catching Ramos in a repeated game loop with real world weapons. And they claim that Instagram equipped it with the knowledge of how, when and where to buy the gun he used.
“To put a finer point: the defendants are chewing alienated teenagers and spitting mass shooters,” says the complaint, and pointed out that the three most mortal school shootings of K-12 in American history: Uvalde, Parkland and Sandy Hook) were committed by young men who played “Call of Duty” and used an AR-15 AR-15.
“Call of Duty is a simulation, not a game. He teaches the players how to aim, recharge and shoot precisely, while the adolescent nervous system to inflict repeated graphic violence. And although the murder is virtual, weapons are authentic,” the complaint alleges.
The election of Ramos of Daniel Defense Ar-15 was intentional, the lawsuit said. The small weapons manufacturer has a market share of less than 1%, but a specific railway that is shown in a popular “Call of Duty” weapon made it easily identifiable for online players despite the lack of brand within the game.
“It is the defendants who gave Daniel to the defense a direct line to the homes and heads of the children, who wrote a book of plays on how seller of firearms while eluding the parents and the law, and who created a simulation with real -life weapons and applauded the children for their competition in the murder,” said the complaint.
Meta did not immediately respond to the request for comments from the Times, nor Daniel Defense, another accused in the lawsuit.
A photo of a weapon next to the truck that the Robb Elementary School shooter crashed before the shooting on May 24, 2022.
(Pete Luna / Uvlade Leader-News)
The courts have long rejected the idea that violent video games such as “Call of Duty” are responsible for the actions of those who play them despite the moral panic that surrounds the problem, and has also annulled efforts to restrict the access of minors to them.
Most modern “Call of Duty” games are qualified for mature audiences over 17 years of age by the entertainment software grades, but are available for minors through online markets that do not significantly verify someone's age before the purchase.
“Any teenager who wants to download Call of Duty can do that,” Josh Koskoff, a lawyer for Uvalde families, told The Times.
A case of the 2011 Supreme Court, Brown vs. Entertainment Merchants Assn., Attached a 2005 California Law that prohibited the sale of violent video games for minors. “There was no tradition in this country to especially restrict children's access to violence … Grimm fairy tales, for example, are really bleak,” wrote the late judge Antonin Scalia in the majority opinion of 7-2.
Activision has long defended its games as a protected artistic expression despite criticism of its extreme violence, which sometimes involves players who kill other combatants, almost never allow civilian victims, in combat simulations, sometimes in public sands such as airports and urban expansions.
“Call of Duty tells complex stories that explore the fighting scenarios of the real world facing soldiers in the modern war. There can be no doubt that Call of Duty is expressive and totally protected by the first amendment,” the company said in a judicial presentation.
Families that still cry their children say that challenging institutions that could not protect them has been a continuous struggle. The new case is another chapter that feels like facing the giants, said Veronica Mata.
A woman walks near the advertising of “Call of Duty” on December 7, 2022 in New York City.
(See Press / Corbis through Getty Images)
The city of Uvalde approved in May a $ 2 million agreement for a defective police response to the shooting, and a Texas Appeals Court on Wednesday the release of documents of the School Board and the County on the shooting, the local news reported.
“We can take a step forward, and we can make that change and make them understand that what they have done and what they continue to do is not benefit them or anyone else,” Mata said.
