In this Q&A, adapted from the
March 1 episode of Public Health On Call,
Tim Carey, JD, a law and policy adviser at the
Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, talks about the unique facts of this case, its larger implications, and why child access prevention laws are an important part of the conversation.
Tell us about this unprecedented case. The case of Jennifer Crumbly is truly unprecedented.
Never before in the history of this country has a parent been charged for the offenses committed by their child in a school shooting, which is saying something in America, where we have the highest rate of school shootings among peer nations.
To get a sense of why this case is so important, let's look at the facts. There was a hearing in a Michigan criminal court in February 2024 where [Jennifer Crumbley] the mother of the Oxford High School shooter was tried and found guilty on four counts of manslaughter, one for each child that her son murdered in the Oxford High School shooting on November 30, 2021.
The rationale behind these charges was that she was so negligent, so reckless in how she handled firearms, how she allowed her child to have access to firearms, and how she failed to see or act upon all the warning signs that led up to the shooting, that the court actually found her criminally liable.
To understand the gravity of how the court reached this finding, we should look back to the shooting itself. On that day, school officials brought the shooter's parents into school to discuss their son's mental health and well-being after he depicted a gun and bloodshed on a school assignment.
His teachers were very worried and called his parents that same day, but the parents opted to not take their child home. Hours later, the child began shooting fellow students and school staff with a gun that he had in his backpack that his parents had bought for him a few days before.
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The manslaughter conviction of Jennifer Crumbley, whose son shot and killed four students at his school, is unprecedented. What could this mean for the larger issue of preventing gun violence?
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