A state trooper carries a sign handed to him to be place at a memorial honoring the victims killed in this week's elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas Saturday, May 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)
Last week, the mother of one of the children murdered in the Uvalde school shooting filed a lawsuit against the city, the school district and, Daniel Defense, the maker of the rifle the killer bought and used that day. The response to the shooting by law enforcement was an utter failure on almost every level. That’s hardly unusual. Similar botched failures to follow well-established active shooter response protocols have cost lives in places like Parkland and the Pulse Nightclub shooting.
But this suit, filed by Sandra Torres and backed by one of Michael Bloomberg’s gun control operations, is of a piece with others that have tried to put at least some of the blame on gunmakers for allegedly over-the-top and negligent marketing of their products that plaintiffs claim prompted the killers to act.
It’s an obvious attempt to sidestep the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and hobble or bankrupt gun companies using lawfare where gun control hasn’t worked.
From US News . . .
The lawsuit accuses the city, the school district and several police departments of a “complete failure” to follow active shooter protocols and violations of the victims’ constitutional rights by “barricading them” inside two classrooms with the killer for more than an hour. The city said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation and the school district and police did not immediately return messages.
Torres is being helped by the legal arm of the group Everytown for Gun Safety. Her suit also names the manufacturer of the AR-style semiautomatic rifle that Salvador Ramos used to fire more than 100 rounds in the horrific mass shooting…
The new Uvalde suit alleges that marketing tactics by Daniel Defense violated the Federal Trade Commission Act by negligently using militaristic imagery, product placement in combat video games and social media to target “vulnerable and violent young men,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director at Everytown Law…
This was the second lawsuit filed after the Uvalde shooting.
Today, Daniel Defense CEO Marty Daniel issued a strongly-worded statement in response, including this . . .
This lawsuit is yet another in a growing line of blatant and legally unfounded attempts to bankrupt the firearms industry. We reject and will vigorously defend against these politically motivated attempts to blame Daniel Defense for the criminal actions of others, as well as to undermine your means of self-defense secured by the Second Amendment.
The erosion of public trust and personal responsibility in our nation has only served to embolden criminals and instigate crime waves across the country. Michael Bloomberg is the same person who wanted to blame obesity on soda cup size; now he wants to shift blame from the shooter to the firearm industry.
Here’s Daniel’s full statement . . .
A statement from Daniel Defense’s Founder and CEO. pic.twitter.com/zUWpVPQGEE
— Daniel Defense (@DanielDefense) December 2, 2022
Notably, a $27 billion class action lawsuit was filed this morning in US District Court in Austin targeting those responsible for the disastrous response to the shooting. The suit names the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District’s police department, the city of Uvalde Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety and individual officers from each of the named agencies who were there that day.
This latest lawsuit does not name Daniel Defense as a respondent.
