Yet another deadly school shooting in Postindustrial America is the direct result of a parent providing an unstable child with a weapon and faces a lengthy prison sentence. How many more parents must be imprisoned for gun-obsessed Americans to stop arming emotionally distraught children?
I’ve sounded off on school shootings since the inception of Postindustrial in 2018 a depressing number of times.
Over the last six years, I’ve suggested ways we can end “the tyranny of gun-obsessed Americans” and written an open letter to Gen Z asking them to take up the mantle of promoting responsible gun ownership because the rest of us are too ineffective and/or cowardly to do anything about it.
I’ve even compared the violence befalling our children in what are supposed to be nurturing, safe places for learning to what I witnessed in Afghanistan.
And while I’d like to think my pleas for sanity and action were more than mere screeds falling on deaf ears, I recognize the limits of their impact.
However, there is perhaps hope that the cycle of school shootings in America (“Only in America” has taken on more ominous undertones after the last few dozen school shootings, hasn’t it?) could finally be curtailed. Not by protests and pressure on our lawmakers to protect our kids, though these pressure tactics should, and must, continue.
But rather by enforcing laws already on the books that hold the parents of school shooters accountable for enabling their children’s murder sprees.
This way, we could scare more gun-obsessed Americans into not passing along their unhealthy, gun-humping behavior to the next generation, or at the very least, keep their guns away from their kids.
For example, the deadly school shooting in northern Georgia was committed by a 14-year-old boy with an assault provided by his father, Colin Gray.
Following his son Colt’s arraignment on four murder charges, 54-year-old Colin Gray stood before the same Georgia judge and faced charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
And goddamn, rightfully so! According to reports, there were ample warning signs that his son Colt was deeply disturbed.
Last year, a then 13-year-old Colt was interviewed by authorities about a deadly threat made against his middle school from his Discord account, which the boy denied writing, attributing the threatening post to someone who allegedly hacked his account.
And on top of that, the father admitted to authorities at the time that his son was having trouble with his parent's separation and that he was being picked on at school.
Colin Gray’s quick arraignment and likely conviction follows the first time earlier this year that parents of a school shooter were convicted and sentenced to prison for enabling their son’s 2021 school shooting in Michigan.
[That both of these school shootings occurred in Postindustrial America is disheartening, though the legal efforts holding parents accountable give me hope our region will lead the rest of the nation towards sanity and safety.]
Let’s make something clear: not every troubled child is a potential school shooter and shouldn’t be treated as such.
Could the FBI, state, and local authorities do a better job of acting on the tips they receive to prevent future school shootings?
Yes. Absolutely.
But the bureau alone gets tens of thousands of tips a year about potential school shooting threats on a myriad of social media platforms. And other authorities are equally taxed and often lack the resources to follow up on each potential threat.
That gap, where feds and cops fall short, is where parents must come in. And those who fail to live up to their responsibilities by giving their deeply disturbed children access to firearms and encouraging their fetishization deserve every day they get behind bars, and then some.
Because only when parents face the consequences of their shitty, fatal parenting will others who actively or passively groom their kids to be school shooters think twice before arming them.
Let’s hope Colin Gray’s eventual long, miserable imprisonment is all the warning other gun-obsessed parents need.
Oh, and those parents found guilty of enabling their school-shooter offspring should be locked under the prison.
For life.
