Parents and school shooters: who’s responsible?
In 2021, a fifteen-year-old took out a handgun and started shooting people in his school in Michigan. Four died and seven others were injured . Eleven months later, he pleaded guilty to dozens of charges , including murder and terrorism . He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole .
He was the only one who pulled the trigger . But he was not the only one charged in the shooting. His parents were charged with involuntary manslaughter . That means killing someone accidentally, but as a result of your own negligence .
The two parents faced separate trials , with separate juries . But in both cases, the juries returned a guilty verdict . The parents were each sentenced to ten years in prison. That was earlier this year, 2024.
This was the first time a parent was held criminally responsible for a shooting committed by a child. And at the time, legal experts wondered whether this would lead to more parents being charged for violent crimes their children commit .
They didn’t have to wait long to get their answer. In early September, a fourteen-year-old killed four people and injured nine others at a school in Georgia. And prosecutors have charged his father with murder, involuntary manslaughter, and cruelty to children . The father faces a sentence of up to 180 years in prison.
Is this a good idea?
Both these shootings were horrific . The victims understandably want justice for those who were killed and injured. And a school shooting has many more victims than just the people hurt at the scene: an entire town is terrorized , a generation of a town’s kids traumatized . Someone should be punished . And it’s only natural, when a child commits a terrible crime, to look to the parents and the home environment .
In both cases I mentioned, the parents acted carelessly with guns and their children. In the case of the Georgia family, the father reportedly bought the teenager a gun as a gift. The Michigan family had a gun at home, but didn’t lock it up , the trial showed.
The parents, many people think, deserve some, if not most, of the blame for creating conditions that make a shooting possible or even likely . And so there is pressure on prosecutors to bring criminal charges against parents
Gun-control activists and victims’ rights advocates support this approach. They say that strong punishments for parents will act as a deterrent : they say that other parents in the future will act more responsibly, locking up their guns at home or not having guns near children in the first place .
Not everyone is so sure.
These two specific cases had a horrific outcome . And in these two cases, it appears the parents did act negligently . And they do share some moral responsibility for what happened.
But there’s a saying in the legal community: “Hard cases make bad law.” That means, it’s dangerous to create a law, which will be applied to a large number of people, if that law is based on an unusual or exceptional case .
Here’s why. You might not feel bad for the parents in the school shooting case. You might think the parents equally share responsibility; you might even think they have more responsibility than their kids do.
But would you think that about the next case that prosecutors bring—a case that might not be so clear-cut ? A case that might not get media attention? The thing is, prosecutors now have a new tool they can use against parents. And use it they will .
And not every case in the future will be so clear-cut. If a child steals a gun, and if the parent has no idea about it, should the parent be charged if the child uses the weapon? You might say “no.” But top prosecutors are elected and the public likes revenge .
Jeff’s take
I don’t know. At first, I thought, prosecutors should charge parents with crimes they really committed. There’s already a law in Michigan that requires people to keep their guns locked up; the parents broke that law . That’s what they should be charged for. And if there aren’t enough laws like that, then the legislatures should pass more. But charging parents for murder when their kids pulled the trigger…that doesn’t sit well with me.
But in one of these cases, a parent bought a gun, ignored warnings from the school about their child’s mental health, and then left the gun unlocked in the house? That’s bad. That’s not pulling the trigger. But that is almost as bad.
So, I think reluctantly I do agree with charging the parents in these cases, but I still worry that this will be abused —that parents will be charged for crimes just for being bad parents.
It’s sad that this would be necessary, but I think the states should write laws that allow parents to be charged only when there is clear parental culpability , when you can draw a clear line between a parent’s actions and the crime the child committed. Otherwise, my worry is, this is open to abuse in the future.
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