Perhaps James Crumbley Should Have Locked Up His Gun
Like his wife, Crumbley has been found guilty on four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
James Crumbley, the father of Oxford, Michigan, school shooter Ethan Crumbley, was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter on Thursday — four counts of it, for each of the students his kid shot and killed, just like his wife was last month.
After the guilty verdict, Crumbley’s attorney Mariell Lehman delivered the following statement to reporters.
"We have maintained since November 30, 2021, that James did not know that his son could or would harm anyone or that he had obtained the means to do so. James feels terrible about what happened that day to Hana St. Juliana, Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Justin Shilling, and the many others affected. We are obviously disappointed with the outcome and also understand that the jury had a very difficult task in front of them," Lehman's statement read.
Except, you know, he did know. He knew the administrators asked him and his wife to take Ethan home that very day and that they refused because they had to get back to work. He knew they were called in because Ethan had made some disturbing drawings, such as a picture of a gun with “The thoughts won’t stop. Help me” written on it, a picture of a bullet with the text “blood everywhere” and the text “my life is useless.”
He knew the kid had access to the gun, because he’s the one who got it for him and who didn’t lock it up.
On some level, I feel like this is part and parcel of the whole “My cold dead hands” thing. Gun owners have been frothed up into such a state of severe paranoia, believing that even something like telling them to keep their guns locked up where their kids can’t get them is part of a nefarious plot to take their guns away. Everything is about giving a big ol’ “fuck you” to all of us out there who they believe want to “control them.” Though they never do get around to explaining what it is they think we’d do with that power. Make them cluck like chickens like in a hypnotist show?
Conservatives have actively fought against child access prevention laws on the grounds that they unfairly single out and “demonize” guns despite not requiring parents to lock up knives or hammers, which could also be dangerous given the right circumstances. I would imagine if there were a spate of accidental toddler stabbings or mass school stabbings, that it might come up — but for now, that is a solution to a problem that does not exist.
Personally, I would think that giving your mentally disturbed child a gun and not locking it up when it’s not in use, and that kid then going and shooting to death four of his classmates and injuring seven more, is a far worse advertisement for guns than “Hey, how about you buy a gun safe?” But that could just be me.
I have all the empathy in the world for parents dealing with difficult children (having been rather difficult my own self) and I know that sometimes it feels as though there’s no right answer with these things — but the answer is never, ever, going to be “buy that kid a gun and leave it unlocked where he can get to it at any time.” That’s not it.
I generally think that incarceration as a form of deterrence is not terribly effective (because of how it’s not). I don’t think anyone is going to say “Oh boy, I better lock my guns up so I don’t end up in prison for involuntary manslaughter when my kid shoots up his school.” I do, however, hope that this trial does put it in people’s heads that even if there’s the most minuscule chance in the world that your child will get hold of your gun and kill others or use it to kill themselves (firearm suicides are the fourth leading cause of injury death for children ages 10-19), it’s probably worth it to just keep it locked up.
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Robyn and I are both deeply skeptical of our current system of punishments (as noted by her statement about lockups not deterring violent crime), but I don't disagree with the concept of criminal allegations being adjudicated, and WOW was this parent begging for a conviction on criminal negligence grounds.
Couldn't happen to a more deserving person. That "I had no idea he might be dangerous and no idea he had a weapon," bullshit ought to burn the tongues of the lawyers repeating it.
Didn't the Crumbleys also leave town right after their son was arrested, and hire lawyers for themselves while leaving him to the public defender? I'd have jailed them for that, let alone the gun idiocy.