Key Takeaways
- James Reeves, a YouTube firearms reviewer, received a subpoena in the case Roberts v. Smith & Wesson, seeking extensive data about his reviews.
- The plaintiffs claim that even independent reviews count as advertising, challenging the distinction between editorial content and marketing.
- The lawsuit holds Smith & Wesson accountable for marketing practices influencing the shooter, alleging deceptive advertising and negligence.
- Dealers and the shooter’s father face accusations related to the sale and transfer of the firearm involved in the shooting.
- Reeves warns others in gun media to respond to subpoenas and preserve all materials, as deleting evidence increases legal risks.
Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
HIGHLAND PARK, IL — James Reeves, a YouTube firearms reviewer, says he has been served with a subpoena in Roberts v. Smith & Wesson, the Lake County lawsuit that grew out of the July 4, 2022, Highland Park parade shooting. He is not a defendant. According to his post on X, the plaintiffs are demanding years of information and analytics about Smith & Wesson and the reviews he has produced, and their subpoena defines an “Advertisement” broadly enough to include unpaid, organic social media content.
A subpoena is a court-backed demand for records or testimony from someone who is not being sued. Reeves says this one reaches “essentially any YouTube video about the M&P15 during the relevant period.” His summary of the plaintiffs’ position: “even an independent review of a lawful product is ‘advertising.’” That is the piece of this story that matters to anyone who has ever put a rifle on camera. The mindset behind that definition treats editorial coverage as corporate marketing, and it does not stop at guns.
The case itself is laid out in the First Amended Complaint, dated July 2, 2024, in the Circuit Court of the 19th Judicial Circuit, Lake County, Illinois (22 LA 487). Keely and Jason Roberts sue individually and on behalf of their twin 8-year-old sons, C.R. and L.R. The defendants are three Smith & Wesson entities, online retailer Budsgunshop.com LLC, Illinois dealer Red Dot Arms Inc., the shooter Robert Crimo III, and his father Robert Crimo Jr. The complaint alleges Crimo III fired 83 rounds from a rooftop starting at 10:14 a.m., killing seven and injuring 48. It says Keely Roberts was shot through the foot, L.R. was hit with shrapnel, and C.R. was struck by a round that left him hospitalized for 73 days and, in the complaint’s words, will never walk again. The complaint states Crimo III has been charged with 21 counts of first-degree murder, 48 counts of attempted murder, and 48 counts of aggravated battery.
Against Smith & Wesson, the theory is marketing. The complaint pleads violations of the Illinois Consumer Fraud and Deceptive Business Practices Act (815 ILCS 505/2 and 505/2BBBB), the Illinois Uniform Deceptive Trade Practices Act (815 ILCS 510/2), and common-law negligence. It alleges the company sold M&P rifles to young men through “More Adrenaline” and “Kick Brass” slogans, ads styled after first-person shooter video games, military imagery the complaint calls a “halo” effect, and paid influencers who showed viewers how to move “cover to cover.” It faults Smith & Wesson for having no age gates on its social media. And it alleges all of that influenced Crimo III to pick the M&P15 out of the several firearms he owned, which the complaint lists as also including a Kel-Tec SUB2000, a Remington 700, and a shotgun. That is the causal link the plaintiffs have to prove, not that the rifle fired, but that advertising made a 21-year-old choose it.
The dealers and the father are in the case on different grounds. The complaint alleges Bud’s Gun Shop sold the rifle online in January or February 2020 and Red Dot Arms transferred it on February 10, 2020, even though both knew the buyer lived in Highwood, where a local ordinance bans possession of assault weapons. It alleges Crimo Jr. sponsored his 19-year-old son’s Illinois Firearm Owners Identification card application in December 2019, months after police filed a “clear and present danger” report on the son, and notes the father has since pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct.
The complaint also names three companies, Cybear Interactive LLC, Watauga Group LLC, and Clandestine Media Group LLC, as “respondents in discovery.” In plain terms, that is an Illinois procedure for pulling in outfits that are not being sued but may hold information the plaintiffs want, and the filing asks that they answer written questions, produce documents, and sit for depositions. Pair that with the complaint’s allegation that Smith & Wesson marketed “directly and through third parties” and its focus on influencers, and the subpoena Reeves describes is not a surprise. It is the next step in the same logic.
Reeves frames all of this as an end-run around the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, the 2005 law he describes as enacted to shield manufacturers from lawsuits over crimes committed by third parties with their products. He says plaintiffs have increasingly pleaded around it with “negligent marketing” claims since Soto v. Bushmaster, the Sandy Hook lawsuit against Remington, and calls Roberts “the same playbook, almost copy+paste.” He says that is why he drafted what became the PLCAA Clarification Act, which by his account has been enacted in West Virginia, Montana, and Kentucky. He adds that he has been told Kentucky has already dismissed a lawsuit under it, though he offers that secondhand. Illinois, he notes, is not going to pass it. Congress could.
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He closes with advice for anyone else in gun media who gets served: do not ignore the subpoena and do not delete anything. That is the right call. Destroying material after a demand for it arrives creates a bigger problem than the one you started with.
I will continue tracking Roberts v. Smith & Wesson as it moves through the Lake County court.
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