Uvalde Mom Files Lawsuit As Front In Battle Over Guns Moves To Courts

ACROSS AMERICA — The mother of a 10-year-old girl killed in the Uvalde school shooting is not only suing the companies that manufactured and sold the AR-style rifle the gunman used to slaughter 22 people, but also the city of Uvalde, the school district and several police departments.

Sandra Torres is among the anguished parents who have received few answers about why law enforcement officers waited 77 minutes inside the hallways of Robb Elementary School on May 24 before confronting the gunman.

Parents and even children barricaded inside the two classrooms whispering into their cellphones pleaded for police to stop the massacre, the deadliest school shooting since 20 people, most of them children, were slaughtered in the Sandy Hook school shooting a decade ago.

“My baby never made it out of the school,” Torres told the Associated Press. “There’s no accountability or transparency. There’s nothing being done.”

The gun industry typically has broad immunity under federal law from lawsuits alleging their products were used to commit a crime, but Torres and others are forging new legal frontiers in the nationwide court battle over firearms — with some success.

Earlier this year, families of the victims of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, secured a $73 million settlement after suing Remington, maker of the Bushmaster AR-15 used in the mass shooting.

Torres’ 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 told the AP it doesn’t comment on pending litigation, and the school district and police did not immediately return the news organization’s messages.

The federal lawsuit, filed by the legal arm of the group Everytown for Gun Safety and the LM Law Group, alleges that gunmaker Daniel Defense unfairly marketed the gun in violation of the Federal Trade Commission Act, and that the Oasis Outback gun shop was negligent in selling Salvador Ramos the semiautomatic rifle he used to fire more than 100 rounds.

Specifically, it accuses Daniel Defense of negligently using militaristic imagery, product placement and combat video games and social media to target “vulnerable and violent young men,” Eric Tirschwell, Everytown Law executive director, told the AP.

“It wasn’t by accident that he went from never firing a gun to wielding a Daniel Defense AR-15,” Tirschwell said, citing the findings of a report written by an investigative committee from the Texas House of Representatives. “We intend to prove Daniel Defense marketing was a significant factor in the choices that Ramos made.”

The AP said the Black Creek, Georgia-based company did not immediately return its message seeking comment.

Testifying at a congressional hearing last summer, Daniel Defense CEO Marty Daniels called mass shootings “pure evil,” but said such events are “local problems that have to be solved locally.”

“The cruelty of the murderers who committed these acts is unfathomable and deeply disturbs me, my family, my employees and millions of Americans across this country,” he said at the time.

• Related: Assault Weapon Makers Claim No Responsibility In Mass Shootings

The action filed by the Sandy Hook parents was the first successful lawsuit against a gun manufacturer. The settlement came after the victims successfully argued that suing over marketing under state law was an exception to the federal immunity measure.

Everytown Law is also assisting survivors and families of victims in the 4th of July parade shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, in their lawsuit against Smith & Wesson, the gun shop that sold the weapon to the accused shooter, and the accused shooter and his father.

That lawsuit, filed in a state court in Illinois, accuses Smith & Wesson of violating the state’s Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Businesses Act with its marketing techniques for assault-style weapons like the M&P 15 semiautomatic rifle, which authorities say was used to shoot more than 50 people, seven fatally, from a rooftop near along the parade route.

• Related: Highland Park Shooting Survivors Sue Smith & Wesson, Gun Shops, Accused Shooter And Father

Another federal lawsuit in the Uvalde shooting accuses Daniel Defense, Oasis Outback and Firequest International Inc., which sold a trigger accessory that turned the AR-15 style semiautomatic weapon “into the equivalent of a machine gun,” according to a news release from Baum Hedlund Artistei & Goldman, the law firm representing the families.

That lawsuit also names as defendants various local entities, police officers and school officials, saying all parties played a role in the attack.

According to the lawsuit, Daniel Defense “directly sold the Uvalde shooter a DDM4 V7 days after his 18th birthday.” It alleges the gun manufacturer’s marketing to young adult males is “reckless, deliberate, intentional, and needlessly endangers American children.”

The lawsuit was filed in September, also in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas.

“These kids just came back to school, and we are already hearing that many of them are scared for their lives,” Monique Alarcon, a lawyer representing the families, said in news release. “It’s clear this unspeakable trauma will be with them for a long time, perhaps for the rest of their lives. This case is about ensuring that they have access to care and resources they need.”

If arguments based on federal law are successful, it could open up gunmakers to costly civil lawsuits as the nation grapples with rising gun violence and a brutal string of mass shootings.

“It would be an important step forward to holding gun manufacturers to account if their marketing crosses a line,” Everytown Law’s Tirschwell told the AP.

Others counter that Daniel Defense didn’t make misleading or deceptive claims that would trigger regulatory action that federal trade law is intended for. Lawrence Keane, general counsel for the firearm industry trade group the National Shooting Sports Foundation, condemned the shooting but argued carmakers, for example, aren’t held responsible when people run them into crowds with fatal results.

“It’s just not the manufacturer’s fault when someone misuses a product,” he told the AP.
Torres is seeking compensatory and punitive damages in amounts to be determined at trial.

For Torres, the case is also another way to seek answers about the botched police response.

“For 77 minutes they did nothing. Nothing at all,” she said. “She’ll never know what it’s like to get married, to graduate, to go to her first prom. ... Never forget their faces.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Gun Violence In America

The common denominator in gun violence is that it happens in towns and neighborhoods across the country to people we know. It touches our communities in multiple ways, from children who pick up their parents’ handguns and accidentally shoot themselves to adolescents who end their lives with handguns to mass shootings. In this series, Patch explores those and other ways gun violence impacts our lives, and what is being done to make our communities safer.

Do you have a story idea for this series? Email beth.dalbey@patch.com.