Don't Jail Parents for School Shootings - Arm Teachers | RealClearPolitics
By John R. Lott Jr.
Understandably, we want to blame someone besides the 14-year-old who murdered
four people last week at Apalachee High School in Georgia. People are shocked
and upset that the father taught the boy to shoot and hunt and bought the boy a
rifle for Christmas. But that doesn't mean it made any sense for police to
arrest the father the day after the school shooting on two counts of
second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter, and eight counts
of cruelty to children.
This isn't the first time that parents are being held liable for their
children's actions. Jennifer and James Crumbley were sentenced to prison for 10
to 15 years after their son perpetrated the 2021 Oxford High School shootings in
Michigan. Their crime? Letting their son have access to the father's pistol,
which was used in the murders.
The problem here is that there are a lot of mistakes to go around, and all too
frequently, many fail to identify these murderers before they commit their
crimes. As I will discuss later, the question is, what policies do you put in
place when you know that we won't identify these killers before they strike?
Georgia police interviewed the boy in May 2023 after he used the Discord
communication platform to threaten to shoot up a school. Making a threat to
murder people is a crime. But police concluded they didn't have enough evidence
for an arrest. The boy claimed that he had stopped using the platform months
earlier and "promised I would never say something [like that]."
Because the police couldn't directly tie the boy to the messages, the bodycam
footage of the interview reveals an officer saying: "I gotta take you at your
word." But why he says that is a mystery. The police knew the IP address of the
home where someone made the posts, which is how they found the boy. And while
the boy and his father had recently moved from there, all the police needed to
know was the posts' dates to see if the boy lived in the house at the time.
The officers didn't even need the level of proof required in a criminal case. If
a judge finds that someone is a danger to himself or others, there is a range of
options, including outpatient mental health care. Gun confiscation or
involuntary commitment may also be options.
If law enforcement officers took the boy at his word, how can we blame the
father for doing the same?
If anything, the Georgia boy's mother should be commended. Thirty minutes before
the attack, she called her son's school to warn of an "impending disaster." "I
told them it was an extreme emergency and for them to go immediately and find
[my son] to check on him," said the mother, in a screenshot of the message that
she sent to the boy's aunt.
But the school didn't act. Isn't the school mainly at fault for that?
Red flags are always easier to notice in hindsight. Indeed, since 1998, 51% of
mass public shooters were seeing mental health professionals before their
attacks. But none of the mental health professionals ever identified these
murderers as a danger to themselves or others. In many cases, people had raised
concerns about these killers before they carried out their attacks, but the
professionals never recognized the threat. If experts miss the danger signs, how
can we blame a parent for not seeing them?
Should the families lock up their guns so only adults have access? Not
surprisingly, crime rates rise when governments prevent people from defending
themselves. When people are required to lock up their guns, criminals more
frequently invade people's homes and then are more successful in murdering or
otherwise harming their victims.
If locking up guns could have prevented all five of the mass shootings committed
by minors since 2000, including this latest shooting, there would have been 25
fewer deaths and 19 fewer people wounded. Of course, these killers may very well
have obtained weapons in other ways. But for the sake of argument, let's assume
that all those attacks simply would not have occurred. The number of lives saved
would still be only about 1/14th of the number of lives lost in just a single
year because mandatory locks kept people from getting to their guns in time.
The horrific deaths and injuries from school shootings rightly get a lot of
attention. But we don't hear about the deaths that occur because people can't
readily access guns to protect themselves and their families. Those deaths are
no less horrific.
The national media rarely mention defensive gun uses, even when young children
use guns to save lives. But dozens of recent cases have been reported by local
news outlets.
Fortunately, there was a security officer at the school, though Kamala Harris
has argued for banning all guns from schools, even for law enforcement. But even
when school resource officers are in the right place at the right time, they
have a tough job. Uniformed guards may as well be holding neon signs saying,
"Shoot me first." Attackers know that once they kill the security officer, who
is the only person with a gun, no one else can stop them.
Having armed teachers carrying concealed firearms takes away that tactical
advantage. Twenty states allow this under a variety of rules. Outside of
suicides or gang violence in the middle of the night, there has not been one
instance of a death or injury from an attack at a school that has armed
teachers.
Not surprisingly, the attacks in Georgia and Michigan both occurred in schools
that banned teachers and staff from having guns. Other schools in Georgia have
armed teachers, but not Apalachee High School.
We could blame law enforcement, schools, mental health experts and the parents.
But, politically, it seems to be easier to blame the parents instead of the
"experts." The bottom line is that if we keep failing to identify these
murderers, what is the backup plan? Let's take real action to protect our
schools and arm teachers.
John R. Lott Jr. is president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. He served
as senior adviser for research and statistics in the Office of Justice Programs
and the Office of Legal Policy at the Justice Department.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2024/09/13/dont_jail_parents_school_shootings_arm_teachers_151611.html 
Don't Jail Parents for School Shootings - Arm Teachers