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This is great, but as a former prosecutor, I really hope it isn't an anomaly.
We need to see widespread prosecution of any and all firearms owners whose firearms get into the hands of children of any age and end up causing serious bodily harm or death, by accident or intention. There has long been an attitude in prosecution offices that losing a kid to an accidental shooting was punishment enough - hell no! The firearms owner who does not store their firearms out of reach of their kids or any other kids needs to go to prison. If we take that line, the incentives to store safely will be huge. But I suspect this won't happen because prosecutors will continue to be afraid of their 2A voters more than they care about dead kids. |
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While I am happy to see this ruling and hope to see more of them related to children accessing firearms, I'm wondering if it would matter whether the specific state does or does not require firearms to be secured. There is no federal law requiring firearms to be secured (right?) and only a few states require it. I looked up the IL law and it doesn't appear to refer to securing firearms in the home.
I should probably read the decisions myself. |
We already can’t get enough teachers. You want to make it impossible? I can’t disagree enough? |
This is insane. The VT shooter was an adult. Same for the Sandy Hook shooter and the mom died. This is why parents shouldn't be held responsible. For crazies like this person. They aren't in your belly anymore. Hoe can these people be independent and also have someone else be responsible for their actions? |
NP. Do you think the violent tendencies started on the above shooters' 18th birthdays? You don't think the previous 18 years of neglectful parents had any impact? The kettle was boiling in all of these shooters, LONG before they became legal adults. The people legally responsible for them then should held accountable - it's not like the VT and Sandy Hook shooters were in their 40s and developed some late in life mental problems. Blaming the teachers, however, is insane. |
First, take a look at support or options that parents have when their children express a mental illness or violent tendencies. You'll see that there is virtually nothing for them. A hospital may be able to hold them for 24 hours. There are very few beds for pediatric mental illness and often they don't accept kids that are violent, which is an oxymoron. The police can introduce them to the criminal justice system at a young age but that won't help them get help and parents have file criminal charges. You can't make a teen take medication. You can't make them go to a psychiatrist. Even if you want to commit them to a facility, that's extremely difficult. There are neglectful parents out there, that's for sure. But there are parents who are willing to move heaven and earth for their kids and there is nothing there to help them. I fully support the ruling agains the parents in this case. |
| J Crumbley’s statement read in court is really something. “Don’t think this can’t happen to you.” Lady, we don’t have hubris that bad things can’t happen to our kids. That’s not the same as buying them a weapon and ignoring a drawing in their journal that literally says “help me”. Gtfo with “we were an average family”. This tells me everything I need to know about how she got here in the first place. |
+1 Parents like the shooters ignore until the 18th birthday, thinking that lends them off the hook. |
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I’m the former prosecutor who posted up the page.
I’ve worked in the system long enough to see the dearth of resources available to families with mentally ill children - even families with plentiful financial resources and connections at the highest level. I would urge you all to familiarize yourselves with the story of Virginia senator Creigh Deeds and his son Gus, who stabbed his father multiple times and then took his own life - hours after being involuntarily committed by a court for psychiatric treatment, but turned away from the hospital for a lack of beds to admit him into at that time. That is just one case which highlights the problem and that even people with plenty of money cannot get their children help in our broken mental health system, never mind families with limited resources and who lack the sophistication to navigate the system the way highly educated and connected parents have. No, parents should not be held responsible for everything their child does once the child reaches the age of legal majority. Only in very limited circumstances where the child is under guardianship even as an adult because they are legally deemed incompetent would that even begin to make sense. This issue with the Crumbleys is very clear cut: Ethan was a minor who under the law could not possess a handgun and Michigan has a safe storage law for firearms. The handgun they bought him came with a free trigger lock device which was still in the plastic wrapper. If they had simply opened that wrapper and taken the seconds required to utilize that trigger lock, the four kids Ethan killed would still be alive and Ethan would more than likely still have his life too. All the other stuff - the way they lived, the state of their marriage, the way they ignored Ethan’s cries for help - isn’t as relevant but just shows that they were not great people or parents. The fact that they were called into the school because of his sketches and words on an assignment that day, including a picture of a handgun, and that they refused to take him home and didn’t mention to the school that there was a firearm in the house so the school could search his backpack - that’s total negligence. Even in the absence of a safe storage law I think most juries could be easily convinced that if there is a firearm in the home and a minor child gets possession of it, that is prima facie evidence of negligence. Americans are outraged over school shootings and other gun violence, and they want to see accountability. If prosecutors have the guts to charge firearm owners with involuntary manslaughter when they fail to secure their firearms and a MINOR child uses the firearms to either accidentally or intentionally wound or kill someone, including themselves, juries will convict more often than not, I think. Let’s give them the chance, anyway. |
“Support” and “options” ?? The parents ARE those things. When parents fail, they must go to jail. |
You are talking about something different. You are talking about people committing violent crimes because they make bad choices. I'm talking about mental illness and not even about this specific case bc I think the ruling is justified here. Please read the former prosecutor's post upthread. It is nearly impossible to get real help for mental illness in children, no matter how much money you have or how hard you try. Or, do a little research yourself on parents attempting to get professional help for their kids. There is a lot of info out there. |
VT shooter was not reported to the police by his parents yet they new he was unstable. They sent him to college when he did not speak parent fail. They had signs that week they chose to ignore. Columbine kids were minors and their parents were a complicit full-stop. Sandy Hook father had a responsibility to contact responsible parties. His son was not someone who should have been around firearms. That father knew that even when the boy was a minor. He never once called CPS on his ex wife. He raised a monster too. |
So how many posts in this 15 page DCUM thread are from the two PR firms hired by the Oakland County, Mich. prosecutor to smear this family? How many posts are from Hulu and Washington Post staff or PR, who had embedded exclusives with the prosecutor's office, while a judge had issued a gag order?
https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2025/01/13/crumbley-campaign-smear-prosecution-defense-ethan/77664834007/ |
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Detroit Free Press front page today.
Prosecution paid $100K to PR firms to 'smear' the Crumbleys https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/oakland/2025/01/13/crumbley-campaign-smear-prosecution-defense-ethan/77664834007/ |
That's not what "smear" means. Sorry, friend. They were bad parents and deserved conviction. |