And now there’s a precedent set to help stop with your school shootings America, everytime an underage person gets hold of and uses a gun on other people, you can now charge the parents, once a couple more go down you watch how quickly people start properly securing their guns away or more on the extreme side, just give most of them up.
You have something to help stop school shootings, please use it America, it’s too saddening seeing how many children die at your school’s when it could be dealt with just be properly securing your guns away from children.
This case will cause a chilling effect but in a backward sort of way. The reality is that nobody is likely to be convicted in the way Crumbley was, because Crumbley was so unbelievably stupid it was literally criminal. So the only people who will be convicted under this precedent are the equally stupid.
But more intelligent parents will take note, get scared, and hopefully lock up their guns so their insane kids can’t use them to shoot up the school.
Yeah I was iffy on the charges until I heard the details. From what I’ve heard the crumbleys were negligent on a level that’s difficult to sufficiently express
Actually the level of ignorance is easy to express, if you’re William Faulkner. There are vast swaths of humanity that are dumb as fucking rocks. It’s not polite to talk about but as someone involved in education admin, there are these kinds of parents EVERYWHERE. I’ve literally sat in disciplinary appeals where the parents try to explain that their child HAD to have a concealed dagger for protection. In a k-12 school with 400 kids total, no school resource officers/popo, no fights, highly involved parents, etc. Um, no, your child is expelled and I’m slightly terrified that they’ll shoot us up when they turn 20 and start going schizto.
Just another reason to not waste time with guns. The risk-benefit just isn’t there.
People want to feel in control and I get that. Take a natural disaster like a wildfire or something. It’s pretty much entirely out of your control. In a burglary, robbery, etc., it too is out of your control you just don’t realize it. The events leading up to that were set in stone in some failure in the assailant’s life, society, etc.
Everyone thinks a gun will make them safer but study after study shows the added risks from a variety of vectors outweighs the alleged safety that comes from possessing one.
In essence, if people had a special device that deterred the one in a million wildfire somehow but that device subsequently elevated the risk of your family being hurt in some other way to a greater degree who would rationally possess such a device?
It concerns me that there seems to be an obvious astroturfed effort to “arm the left” that reflects the ProPublics investigation on right-wing extremists seeking to muddy the waters between the sides and sow a civil / race war. The only people jumping in glee from this are firearm manufacturers who see a new market to tap.
It concerns me that there seems to be an obvious astroturfed effort to “arm the left”
Riiiight… because the only way the left could possibly ever arm itself is because of astroturfing, right?
Somehow, I don’t think you know what left means, genius.
More Intelligent parents probably wouldn’t have guns at home in the first place you sure this is going to change anything?
For many people, guns are used for sport (hunting). In rural areas, this is very common. Some people are just paranoid and feel the need to be armed. It’s not stupid in its own right. If the owner of the gun knows how to secure it properly and takes the appropriate precautions, it can be safe to store firearms in a house. The problem is that too many people who own guns let their egos get too big and are neglectful of gun safety or downright stupid. That’s when problems arise.
There is real nuance to this issue. Don’t try to dumb it down to “gun owners are idiots”.
Yeah there’s already the worst possible thing as the potential outcome so really can’t see adding a tiny part to it will change anything. No one is thinking ‘well as long as he’s only shooting up the school I’ll let him play with the guns’ they’re thinking ‘I’m really smart and nothing bad will ever happen’.
I’m not saying it isn’t a good idea because maybe it will stop one or two kids becoming killers which is more than worth it, though it’s dangerous too if the kid decides it’s how he’ll get his revenge by doing a shooting and leaving a note saying his stepdad helped
Hmm better make a reminder about this before I head into work as a district attorney
Yeah you’d better especially if you’re a shitty parent giving an emotionally troubled teen access to a weapon, you’ll end up with a special prosecutor rightfully charging your ass.
Remember Mr prosecutor this guy’s wife thought it was more important to get finger banged by her lover instead of helping her child in crisis. They’re trash people.
You’ve got some crazy wishful thinking if you think this is enough for people to give up their guns.
All I want is for people to properly secure their guns at best and not let their hormone filled children gain access to them.
We have shit loads of guns in Australia still, we just don’t have it so any billy bob can go down and get a military spec assault rifle to “defend their home”.
Good, they were both grossly negligent with a weapon.
I have a couple thoughts on this. First, if the adults are guilty and the courts accepted the argument that they neglected to give the child the help he needed, why is the child serving a life sentence? The article makes it sound like he wanted help and knew he needed it.
Also, I thought I read that the parents had not just left the weapon unsecured, but let him use it.
Because only the parents knew the worst parts, they bought him a gun, and then left it accessible.
Days later when called to the school over concern that he was showing signs of committing a mass shooting, the parents downplayed it and said their son should remain in school.
They didn’t mention the gun, or ask the son about it. They didn’t even go home to check.
We have this weird taboo over talking about guns. But when a kid shows these signs “do they have access to guns” should be one of the first questions asked.
I mean, it’s a common question in these scenarios.
Nothing physically compels them to tell the truth, though.
The kid needed help, and knew he needed help, but he still chose to go through with it instead of turning himself in.
The drawing on the math paper was a cry for help. He could have just as easily turned himself in, he did not.
It also doesn’t help that:
a) Ethan gave his dad the money for the gun, and picked out that specific gun, when he was not old enough to own a gun.
b) Dad made a straw purchase for his son.
c) Mom posted to Instagram calling the gun her sons Christmas present.
I don’t think many kids know about their options though. He basically said “I asked my parents for help and they denied me, so I can’t get help.” To me, that suggests the kid thought he exhausted his options. An uneducated child is a system failure imo, not a child’s criminal act.
I’d also say that most people who are victims of suicide could have turned themselves in. Do we frown on them because they opted for violence?
The criminal justice system doesn’t normally care how awful you are to yourself, its there to try and prevent you being awful to others. I believe you can still be charged with a crime in most of America if you survive a suicide attempt, but it isn’t normally pursued because it doesn’t really accomplish the things the state cares about…just like the state doesn’t typically care about any psychiatric conditions you have unless they make you a danger to others.
I’ve got a few psychiatric conditions myself, and sometimes they contribute to me making bad choices that negatively impact the people I care about, but that doesn’t absolve me of the responsibility I have to own up to my actions and make amends when I fuck up. I can’t imagine anything I’ve dealt with leading me to the conclusion that killing a bunch of children or peers would be acceptable or desirable, but I also have the benefits of being properly medicated and having years of therapy under my belt that had given me a lot of great tools for dealing with my shit…but its still my shit and I’m responsible for it.
And yes, I do tend to frown on suicide. It’s a final solution to a usually temporary problem, hurts EVERYONE who loves you, and it destroys your ability to do anything to make the world better.
In USA, we have a Punitive Justice system, which is about punishing people for things they have or may have done. This has conditioned us to -want- people to be punished for perceived slights. This is opposed to a Rehabilitive Justice system that some European countries have, which is about not just helping the one who commited the crime to be a better person, but conditioning their citizens to not be the type of people that commit said crimes in the first place. That’s all there is to it.
That guy is a murderer and his father is an accessory to murder. Where’s the doubt?
The child asked for help and was neglected. Had he not committed a crime, wouldn’t we be calling him a victim?
Even if he’d been found not competent to stand trial, he’d still be committed involuntarily. I don’t know if this makes a difference.
The kid killed 4 other kids. At 15 you know that isn’t acceptable even if you need help.
And it’s very messed up he didn’t get that help. However, he’s still responsible for his actions and needs to be held accountable for them. He knew it was wrong or he wouldn’t have asked for help in the first place. 15 is old enough to understand what it means to kill someone.
If you’re an alcoholic, and you’re trying to get help, but you drive drunk on the way to therapy and kill someone, you’re still responsible.
The sentiment that your mental health crisis somehow absolves you of your actions is dangerous for society. I’m pretty far left politically but I’ve been seeing this more and more from that side of the aisle and it’s concerning. Arguably everyone who kills has something mentally wrong with them!
Going by the education I got from L&O, what happens in one trial doesn’t really affect a separate trial, even for the same crime
We live in a time in history (like all times previous and much of the future) where resources are scarce, both natural and otherwise. This falls into the “otherwise” category. Does the boy need help? Yes. He is a human, and so he deserves help like the rest of us. However, the resources diverted to helping him could help many more, instead. Many who have a much higher chance of rehabilitation. Triage isn’t a nice thought, but in the mental health crisis we live in, it’s the only thing we have. We have to help as many as we can, and that means some of the ones that need it the most get left behind. If there were infinite means of rehabilitation and assistance then he would get everything he needs, unfortunately that isn’t the case, and so instead he gets the most we can offer, which is life in prison. There will be other options for help inside, though they are lacking. Perhaps through a societal and political change we can begin to better help him and those like him, but those changes have to happen before any work can be done. Railing against the system won’t do any more good than banging your head against a wall. Right now, helping him isn’t an option, though, if you work hard for it, you can help change that. Talk to your state politicians, send letters, raise awareness among your peers. If the change is important to you, then make it a priority in your life.
The resources argument doesn’t really make sense. Locking someone up for life is more resources than a few years of rehabilitation.
I’ll still be downvoted for it because I’m holding society accountable for society’s problems, instead of letting everyone have it easy by blaming “the system.”
These have got to be some of the stupidest people alive, holy shit
It’s pretty wild that you can charge someone as an adult and then charge their parents.
I really don’t get the existence of charging someone as an adult regardless though.
“James Crumbley is not on trial for what his son did,” prosecutor Karen McDonald told the jury. “James Crumbley is on trial for what he did and for what he didn’t do.”
They neglected their son’s mental health problems and left a gun unlocked at home
But age up everyone 20 years in the story so everyone is more obviously an adult in your head. 60-something year old parents neglecting their adult son’s mental health is not their fault anymore. If he’s an adult, it’s his responsibility. Even if the dad bought the son a gun, if the son is an adult, then the son was responsible for locking it up and keeping it safe.
It makes sense to me to charge a parent for getting their kid access to something dangerous and ignoring safety requirements. Like installing a pool without a fence that a kid drowns in, that’s clearly morally the parent’s fault. But the kid has to be a kid. Buying your adult child a pool which they later drown in is not the parent’s fault. Culpability shifts when the child becomes an adult.
The son is 15. That’s still very much the parents responsibility. That’s a child who lives with his parents, who can’t buy his own gun, who doesn’t have the same mental capacity as the 35 year old in your hypothetical.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_of_minors
A person can technically be a child, and then found to be responsible enough to be treated as an adult. To use a fictional example, Dougie Howser, MD was a 14 year old licensed to dispense drugs.
Same deal with charging someone as an adult. If a 14 year old plans a crime over months they can’t claim that they acted impulsively or had no idea of what the crime would mean.
I get your argument, but at the end of the day they’re a child. I’d argue you can’t have the mind of an adult until you’re an adult despite how much it seems to emulate as such.
I don’t think there’s a magic moment when a person becomes ‘adult.’ A person of 17 years and 11 months old and another person 18 years and three days old aren’t fundamentally different.
But there are different places in the legal code to modify punishments against intent, like manslaughter v murder. One would think the idea behind charging someone as a minor is because they are a minor, who by definition has a less developed brain and less worldly experience.
We don’t think they’re developed enough to vote, and we don’t have exceptions to that based on someone thinking really hard about it or really knowing what they’re doing. They’re just minors, they can’t “vote as an adult.” Even emancipation is more about separation from parents, it’s not gaining full rights as an adult.
That’s why it’s done on a case by case basis.
I’ve know 12 year olds who had opened their own bank accounts and could be trusted to care for a baby, and 16 year olds who needed supervision all day.
I’m just pointing out how the laws work, I don’t have a stake in the issue.
