Three victims of a 2021 mass shooting at a FedEx facility in Indiana are suing the gun manufacturer for the advertising of its products that the suit claims directly influenced part of the shooter’s actions.
The lawsuit was filed two years after the shooting in Indianapolis, Indiana, when Brandon Scott Holes, a former employee at the facility, went on a rampage and killed eight.
Lakhwinder Kaur and Harpreet Singh, who survived the shootings, are filing the lawsuit along with Gurinder Singh Bains, whose father, Jaswinder Singh, died in the shooting.
“Pain like what we have gone through can’t be understood until you’ve experienced a tragedy like this,” Bains and Singh said in written responses to the Guardian.
The complaint names American Tactical, the manufacturer of the weapon used by Holes, and pointed out the strong influence the company’s advertising probably had on the shooter, who at the time of the attack was allegedly wearing a vest “nearly identical” to the one shown in the gunmaker’s ad.
“It’s American Tactical’s recklessness that brought this horror to our lives and what matters is that they are held accountable so no one has to face a nightmare like this again,” Bains and Singh said.
The lawsuit claims the manufacturer prioritizes its marketing “in whichever ways will result in the most sales, even if its marketing attracts a dangerous category of individual”.
There have been more than 100 mass shootings in the US as of the first week of March this year, two weeks earlier than when the toll hit the same number in 2021, the year of the FedEx shooting.
As the number of gun massacres continues to rise, with primarily Republican politicians refusing to take action, lawmakers are finding ways to hold accountable parties involved – in any capacity – behind the shootings. In a 2021 school shooting case in Oxford, Michigan, parents of the shooter face involuntary manslaughter charges.
While this kind of action isn’t new, it’s extremely rare, Philip H Bangle, one of the attorneys representing the FedEx shooting victims, said.
Bangle and his team’s hope is that these actions will bring a change on a policy level, as it will prompt those in the firearm industry to act responsibly.
“When you have someone who is acting as irresponsibly as many actors in the gun industry do, there’s very little that will motivate them to change their practices than to face a large financial liability,” Bangle said. “Implementing responsible practices is a way to limit their liability and not get sued in future.”
“We want them to change their practices so that this doesn’t continue to keep happening in future,” he added.
Many of the workers at the facility were Punjabi Americans, a minority group that has been repeatedly under gun attacks in post-9/11 America, including a 2014 Sikh temple shooting.
With that lingering trauma, many said following the 2021 shooting that they experienced it as “hate crime”, even though no such charges were brought against the shooter. Hate crime can be tricky to prove given the complex nature of proof in which the prosecution has to establish that the shooter’s motive was specifically the victim’s identity.
But the lack of a legal acknowledgment of hate crime doesn’t mean the victims don’t experience it as hate crime.
“We know that the FedEx facility the shooter targeted was primarily staffed by a Punjabi workforce, and the shooter was well aware of that fact,” Bains and Singh said. “It would be impossible for us not to feel targeted as a community given the circumstances.”
The plaintiffs, Punjabi immigrants from India, have other added layers to their grief.
“America’s level of gun violence is exponentially higher than in other countries and it must be scary and shocking to come from another country to America, and then experience this first-hand,” Bangle said.
Meanwhile, the community has had to mourn these deaths while the relatives of the deceased are still in their home country.
“Everyone knows how much difference the support of your family makes in hard times and not having all of our family members nearby is a struggle,” Bains and Singh shared.
Now the families, by virtue of this lawsuit, find themselves placed at an important juncture regarding one of the most heated issues in American politics and public life: the epidemic of gun violence and how to curb it.
“This is about justice for them and their families,” said attorney Leslie Mitchell Kroeger, “but it’s also about doing their part to try to change that narrative so that we don’t continue to see week after week of shootings of this magnitude.”
When contacted by the Guardian, two separate individuals from American Tactical said they had no comment and hung up.
