A welcome precedent
Last Thursday, a jury found James Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter, after the conviction of his wife, Jennifer Crumbley, in a separate trial last month. Their son killed four students and wounded seven others with a gun they purchased for him as an early Christmas present.
Ordinarily, it’s best to be humble when blaming parents for their children’s actions. As poet Kahlil Gibran put it, children come through their parents but are their own people. “You may give them your love but not your thoughts/ For they have their own thoughts,” Gibran wrote.
But while children may have their own thoughts, they don’t have their own guns. Parents should be held responsible if they provide one to their deeply troubled child.
The morning of the shooting, the Crumbleys were called to the school after a teacher noticed their son’s violent drawings with the words “help me” and “blood everywhere” – and a drawing of an object that looked like a gun. And yet they did not tell the school officials that they had bought their son a gun. They did not search their son’s backpack, where the gun was stowed. The unused lock for the gun was later found in their apartment.
The jury that convicted Jennifer Crumbley was told how her son said he repeatedly asked his parents for help with his mental health struggles, only to be ignored. Without that gun purchase, this parenting tragedy would have harmed one family. However, because of the gun, four other children were killed.
I’d go a step further. Anyone who negligently leaves a gun easily accessible should be held culpable if someone else uses that gun for a crime or an attempted suicide. This sort of culpability may even lead to civil payouts, which could put pressure on the insurance industry as well. Maybe, just maybe, those who have so far escaped liability – organizations like the National Rifle Association and the politicians that collude with their deadly campaigns – will feel some pressure from other stakeholders to support higher standards for gun ownership.