We need that like button back for OP’s. It’s tragic on all sides. I hope that even those who stand up for unrestricted rights for ”responsible gun owners” have no issue holding accountable those who are less than responsible.

Good, especially since they tried to run.

Good indeed. I feel that although their son has to bear responsibility for this tragedy, the parents threw their son under the bus in neglecting his well-being. His mother commented that she would do nothing differently!

None of the incidents or unique aspects of same in the steady stream of tragedies that continue from week to week has ever led to any significant changes. They're all different in some ways (as here with the initial conviction of parents) and yet they're all the same in that nothing substantive from a big picture perspective ever changes.

Having hope for any kind of ameliorative change might make some feel better but I doubt anything will happen. The many gulfs that divide reasonable thinking and apparently non-thinking people in our country on various issues are deep and they seem to be permanent.

AND they bought him the gun as a gift!

The day before the shooting the school counsellor had asked the parents to remove their son from the school. They refused. It appears the school tried.

It’s not uncommon for parents to buy guns for their kids in hunting communities. But they knew Ethan was disturbed. They made no attempt to keep the gun secured or to get their son help when shown some very explicit drawings and threats written by Ethan. When the school counselors saw these same papers, they refused to have his backpack searched and refused to enforce hs removal from school.

The gun was laying at the very top of his backpack.Ethan had been begging for help for a long time and was ignored by his parents.

Locking the barn door and all that...😔

Seems like prevention is a concept anathema to many folks.

So be it, and this verdict can be the Precedent for every guardian behind a juvenile involved in a violent crime. The verdict can now open the door to prosecute any guardian who raised and ignored signs indicating ta kid was danger. I hope it applies to all guardians of a juvenile who killed by any weapon and not just headline tragedy cases. because doesn't the rule of law apply to all?

Now we can go back decades because killing has no statue of limitation so we can get Mom, pa or even grandma if she was raising a kid who killed, and if a court finds them guilty of ignoring the signs then lock them up. We're going to need more prisons,

It should be expanded to any violent crime but I wouldn't be opposed to thief and property damage so Mom and dad (if they know who he was) can make the victim whole again. There also shouldn't be any consideration given based on race, sex, age, economic status or intelligence level of these bad guardians to meet equality for all. Could we also raise the age of a juvenile to 30 when it comes to their crimes? Makes since to me.

Parents with children with challenges grasp at straws to find something ANYTHING they can use to connect with said child or find an interest. Schools have trap teams, maybe even pistol leagues. Perhaps the local gun club has many different types of leagues that involve firearms. Hind sight is 20/20 and things that sound obvious in the rear view mirror--aren't in real time. That said I would have to know if this boy was raised rather 'free range' as we call the kids of hands off parents or if the parents were doing what they knew to do before I would be willing to cast judgement.

This is along the same lines as charging parents when a teens’ party at their house involves alcohol, and especially after an accident occurs involving the alcohol. This happened in my former community, the parents tried to cover it up by disposing of the empty bottles and cans, and went to prison. Parents need to be aware and involved, and keep their children and other children safe. There are already laws about that.

(free-range kids do not necessarily have hands-off parents. Their kids are neglected.)

arcy, according to this article, there were 1073 people killed or wounded in school shootings from 2018 to 2023. I'm ashamed and horrified by that and I hope you are too.

Not all the perpetrators were problem children, not all the parents were absentee parents. What each and every incident did have in common was ONE thing. I'll help you, the first letter is "g".

Edit - the article link won't post. It's from US News and the heading includes school shootings by state

This wasn't just some terrible, unforeseeable accident - 4 kids were murdered.

I missed a comment.

Yes indeed, this situation would have been averted if the school had a pistol shooting team or if the kid had been a member of a gun club.

Unbelievable. Refer back to my earlier comment. The last thing this kid needed was a way to practice to improve his shooting ability. Also, refer back to my comment about the letter "g" as being the problem.

"That said I would have to know if this boy was raised rather 'free range' as we call the kids of hands off parents or if the parents were doing what they knew to do before I would be willing to cast judgement."

It would seem that two juries have already cast judgment. What does it matter whether the parents were free range or hands on? Either way, they utterly failed both their own son and his victims. They need to be held accountable for their failures as parents.

As for the broader picture, we all know that America has a unique approach to gun ownership, and that nothing is going to change that. But it's more than time that the citizen's right to bear arms is counterbalanced by his/her accountability for handling those arms responsibly, and for paying the price when things go wrong. Maybe this is a start.

Probably the first time I’ve ever seen one particular poster withhold judgment of the upbringing of a child she doesn’t know - a school shooting. Go figure.

Well the letter G comes 4th in the common connections in most mass shootings. So why do you skip to the 4th common link and bypass the main reasons? Looks like an uninformed poster or a cherry picker to me, so If you want to be a champion of a cause google the common links and work on the first three reasons first. Because pounding your chest about the 4th is a lost battle people who identify with the letter L will never win.

Well, I'm hoping things will change eventually. Most Americans want some form of gun control. The young people who have had to go through school shooting drills or actual shootings are fed up and they will grow up and start voting. All those old, corrupt politicians who are bought off by gun lobbyist need to just retire and/or die off. Hopefully they'll be replaced by people with common sense and decency.

It doesn't matter what most Americans want because our government is not a democracy - it is a republic, meaning that laws are made by representatives, and those representatives do what the lobbyists bribe them to do (as you said) - not what the people who elect them want them to do. It is sick system, and I do not believe that it can be fixed. We are stuck with the 2nd Amendment even though it is outdated and most citizens want it changed.

Lars - sorry, but I disagree with this old argument about republic vs democracy. A republic is simply a form of government which does not have a monarch as head of state. It may be a democracy, in which the people choose the government, or it may be a dictatorship in which the people have little or no say in how they are governed, or it may be anything in between. There is no government, not even Switzerland, in which the citizenry votes on every policy, law or action the country takes: we all have some form of representative government.

If there is a problem with corrupt politicians, it is not because the US is a "representative government" rather than a direct democracy, because many other representative governments do manage to do what the people elect them to do. The US has serious issues with its form of government because the US is so very deeply divided socially and politically. The healthier democracies have much more nuance and variation in their politics - few, if any, are a rigid two party system, and quite a number rely on coalitions of groups with different perspectives to form governments, so a wider range of opinion is heard. Other democracies have been better able to adapt and change with time, while the US has been handcuffed by a Constitution that was visionary in the 18th century but is incapable of adjusting to the 21st.

Do I think it can be fixed? I don't know. The US could learn lessons from other, better performing democracies, but American hubris renders that unlikely . Maybe it takes a mass movement from outside the two sclerotic parties to effect meaningful change.

Most people know when they physically or otherwise are "visitors" in someone else's country or when discussing matters happening in a foreign land that it's impolite and crass to criticize those local things that are different from where they are from.

You're like a broken record with your US bashing. It's ignored by most.

PS - political corruption and abuse of power exists everywhere. Australia and Canada included.

When the day comes that people are not "allowed" to criticize a country like the US which widely impacts the rest of the world is the day Americans can just stop pretending we have free speech.

Rude is rude, patriciae. Free speech laws deal with very different subject matters and certainly don't have any bearing on private, informal conversations.

If you think it's not out of bounds, then good for you! You're welcome to your view but I'll suggest it's not widely shared.

"Most people know when they physically or otherwise are "visitors" in someone else's country or when discussing matters happening in a foreign land that it's impolite and crass to criticize those local things that are different from where they are from."

Two things come to mind. The first is, you apparently have an issue with anyone other than an American exercising the right to free speech. Funnily enough, the rest of the world would probably regard my comment as an entirely reasonable analysis of the US state of affairs today . You don't like to hear it: well, that's on you, not me.

And secondly, I have read your disdainful comments about Canada, Britain, and Australia, to name but three. You have made some pretty crass (and massively uninformed) criticisms of all three. "Do as I say, not as I do," comes to mind. So let's just recognize the hypocrisy on display here.

And to make a very obvious point, which perhaps you don't recognize, stuck as you are in your California redoubt, my views are in fact very widely shared, certainly outside America, but also within. Perhaps my reference to American "hubris" is relevant because your statement is a classic example of it.

America is not a perfect country and its model of democracy is flawed. That is a coldly objective statement, widely shared. If you don't like it, too bad. I'm waiting for you to show me what I actually got wrong. So why don't you clutch your pearls and flounce off.

This thread is likely to go HT poof soon enough...

But I recall this one when it happened. It's easy to pin it as a gun thing. But it's really a mental health thing. The kid was mentally unwell, it was noted multiple times. The shooting was the horrible end to a series of issues. If he hadn't had access to a firearm, it's very well likely he would have caused harm in other ways. The stigma around mental health is so thick it's easy to pin it on the weapon used rather than the unhealthy behind it.

Oh, please. Any 'mental illness' here seems to me to trace back to the uninvolved parents -- but what do I know, having only read bits and pieces *after* the tragedy played out. Schools see this lack of parenting all the time. Add easily obtained firearms to any situation and *boom*! We need to control what we can control: *guns*. Ensure 'acting out' absent the lethal weapon if you want a better outcome.

The gun control was there- in the hands of the parents. They bought Ethan the gun as a present, they did not have it secured or under control when Ethan took it to the school. MIchigan already has laws about buying handguns for minors and what situations minors are allowed to handle them. The parents didn't abide by that- it's part of the reason why they were handed the ruling they were handed. That's the states part of the gun control, holding the parents responsible for their lack of control over their gun and their son.

"Rude is rude." Yes it is Elmer and your comment to jmm is very rude indeed.

I welcome the views of outsiders who can bring different perspectives to our situation. There's nothing worse than drinking one's own bathwater as it blocks outside, top-down perspectives, the benefit from other's experiences, and shuts down avenues for improvement because it presumes that "only we know best". It is the most insecure in their beliefs who cannot tolerate challenges from others and then paper over their insecurity with arrogance. Far better to open one's mind to the comments of outsiders to see if there is something to be gained. That doesn't mean you have to agree with their comments, but one should at least be open to examining them to see if there is value in their perspective.

There is one thing that troubles me about this case, and that is the inconsistency of trying the shooter as an adult *and* holding his parents responsible. Seems to me, if we are going to consider the boy an adult, then he's responsible for his own choices. But if he's considered a minor than holding the parents accountable makes more sense.

Elmer, you often make gratuitous snarky comments about the American south though you have to know there are a number of people here from the south. Rude? I think so but it is your right to have your opinion. It is common for people in the PNW to make snotty comments about Californians. Rude? yes but sometimes understandable. I mainly defend people like JMM because I very much value opinions from elsewhere in the world. We are not a perfect nation and can stand to hear that which hopefully will make us reflect on our culture and do something about it.

Guns in your household increase the chance of someone dying of a gunshot. Suicide Is the major gun related death. Using a gun in a violent attack vastly increases the chance of death. There are stats out there on this.

Somebody is feeding our troll again . . . .

Never wrestle with a pig. You just get dirty and the pig enjoys it.

"But I recall this one when it happened. It's easy to pin it as a gun thing. But it's really a mental health thing."

Of course there were mental health issues involved, but mental health issues (and poor parenting) are not unique to the US. I daresay the levels of both are comparable to those in other developed countries. And while some developed countries have better mental health care facilities than the US (Netherlands, Sweden, etc), others do not. But the US is unique for the frequency of school shootings (and other forms of homicide).

The simple fact is that the availability of firearms, and the sloppiness of the laws around training, safeguarding and licencing of firearms compared with other counties, ensures that weapons are far more accessible to the mentally ill there than in Canada or Britain or Switzerland etc. If he had lived in one of these countries, an Ethan Crumbley might still have resorted to violence, but it's much less likely that violence, in the absence of a firearm, would have resulted in 4 deaths. And it certainly wouldn't happen with the regularity that mass shootings occur in the US.

Mental health issues may be the cause of violence, but the easy availability of firearms is responsible for the high fatality rate.

One does not know the family dynamices in this case. Many questions unfold, including history of family violence, neglect, abuse, alcohol alcohol/dug use etc. How about the impact of violent video games on the human psyche? Wanna bet, This kid and many other shooters have deep seated anger/resentment issues. Where do these come from?

Of course, there are those with untreated or misdiagnosed psychiatric problems such as schizophrenia or psychosis. What were the parent’s view or messaging re guns…

In the end, well adjusted individuals, those with self respect, a respect for society and who see themselves as a part of a functioning society do not, generally seek to commit violent acts.

As far as international folk commenting on this forum, the usa itself is guilty of international interference. Sheesh, just last week didn't’ Schumer call for new elections? How about America’s attempts to overthrow communist regimes etc…America will protect resources it deems necessary and needed for its own needs; regardless where the resources exist in the World! Now talk about interference!

What happens in America impacts the entire world! Personally, I value America, it IS and always has been one of the greatest countries in the world, let’s keep it this way!

The comments above are crossing the line of acceptable discourse on this site, and may well lead to this thread going away.

And there is quite a bit documented about the circumstances surroundings that miserable kid's life.