The case against the parents is shaping up to be another Kyle Rittenhouse moment. While I have no real sympathy for their son, the question is what responsibility do parents have for the actions of their children? What are the parents obligations? Are parents required to monitor their children’s social media posting? Assuming there is no law prohibiting it, does purchasing a weapon and giving it to their 15 year old son rise to the level of gross negligence required to prove involuntary manslaughter? Should the parents have had reason to know or did they refuse to see that their son would use the weapon to kill and injure his classmates? If we go down that rabbit hole, do we also hold the school responsible for missing the same signs that the parents should have seen? Was this boy bullied, and did the teachers or the administration have reason to know? I don’t know the answers to these questions, but I believe the criminal prosecution of the parents is intended as an attack on the Second Amendment.
This has been discussed at length on other FR threads.
The father bought the handgun on Black Friday with son present. On Saturday the mother posted a picture of the gun on social media captioned “Mom & son day testing out his new Xmas present”.
A few hours before the shooting, the parents were called to the school after
A drawing of a semi-automatic handgun pointing at the words, “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me.”
A drawing of a bullet with “blood everywhere” written above the bullet.
A drawing of a person who appeared to have been shot twice and bleeding.
A drawing of a laughing emoji.
Writing that said, “My life is useless.”
Writing that said, “The world is dead.”
At the meeting, the parents were asked to take the boy home and were given 48 hours to get him into counseling. The parents declined to take him home and left him at the school. During the meeting, the gun and ammo and notebook with his plans to shoot other students were right there in his backpack.
When the father heard about the shooting, suspecting it was his son, he rushed home to check on the gun and found it missing.
There’s more, but you can look it up for yourself. It sounds to me, based on reports, like the parents were um, not thinking straight (to put it mildly). Knowing he had access to a new handgun he considered his own, then seeing his disturbing drawing and words and cry for help at the school meeting, they really should have taken him home and confiscated the backpack.