The mother of a 10-year-old girl killed during the May 24 massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas has sued the maker of the gun used to carry out the despicable crime and the law enforcement agencies that appear to have botched their responses to it. Before it was over, 19 children and two teachers would lose their lives after the gunman fired over 100 rounds within the school’s walls.
Gunmaker Daniel Defense is named in the lawsuit and is accused of marketing its products in a way that targets “vulnerable and violent young men.” “It wasn’t by accident that [the gunman] went from never firing a gun to wielding a Daniel Defense AR-15,” said the executive director of the group assisting the woman with her lawsuit. “We intend to prove Daniel Defense marketing was a significant factor in the choices that [the gunman] made.”
The shop that sold the gunman his weapons and ammunition is also named in the lawsuit. In a report issued to the Texas House of Representatives, FBI interviews of shop patrons that were there at the same time the gunman was making his purchases show that one quipped that he “looked like…a school shooter.”
The lawsuit also names several law enforcement agencies as defendants in the case for their lack of response to the massacre. While over 400 law enforcement officers responded to the scene after reports of the shooting went out, over an hour was allowed to elapse before the gunman was finally killed. A report on the school shooting blamed the delay on “egregiously poor decision-making” while simultaneously accusing those on site of failing to follow their own active shooter training protocols and prioritizing their safety over the safety of those being threatened by a shooter bent on killing as many children as he could. According to reporting by the Associated Press, police response to the shooting included “’barricading [victims]’” inside two classrooms with the killer for more than an hour.”
“For 77 minutes they did nothing. Nothing at all,” says the girl’s mother.
