McDonald said James Crumbley bought the gun four days before it was used in the shooting. His son Ethan was with him and later posted on social media about the gun, calling it “my new beauty.”
Jennifer Crumbley also posted about the gun on social media, calling it “his new Christmas present,” McDonald said.
There was also this (emphasis mine):
McDonald said a teacher saw Ethan Crumbley searching ammunition on his cell phone during class the day before the shooting and reported it to school officials. The school contacted Jennifer Crumbley via voicemail. Officials also sent an email but received no response from either parent, McDonald said.
“Jennifer Crumbley exchanged text messages about the incident with her son on that day, stating, quote, ‘LOL, I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught.’ End quote,” McDonald said.
Incidentally, totally off the wall here, but I like perusing old magazines, and this is an ad from the June, 1925 issue of Popular Science, for Corona brand typewriters (later to become Smith-Corona):
Possibly to take the bridge or tunnel to Windsor, Ontario, Canada; to try to escape Michigan justice. Not a great plan, since US and Canadian law enforcement can work together when necessary, and Canadian Border Services Agency (i.e. Canadian Customs) would be their first stop on the Canadian side. Undoubtedly, CBSA was alerted. And there is an extradition treaty between the two countries (US and Canada), so if they did get into Canada somehow, they’d be apprehended by local police when spotted, and returned to the US.
Either that, or they wanted to get lost in the most populated part of the state. Dump their car, which was described along with its license plate on TV news, and disappear into the crowd. Get a Greyhound, and go anywhere.
I can just imagine one or both of them — more likely Jennifer — trying to assert Second Amendment rights to CBSA when attempting to cross the border while packing.
As I told my daughter, I wouldn’t have been surprised if they’d tried to head to Nevada to hide out with the Bundys until the Second American Revolution. In any case, I’m glad they were caught before they could wreak more havoc on themselves or others.
Upon reflection… here’s what I think (and tell me if what we know so far doesn’t support this):
They wanted their son to shoot up the school.
Become (in)famous. Grab some headlines for himself and for them. Act out their impotent rage at you name it: society in general, people with more money, uppity (educated) people who think they’re better than us, libruls, anti-gun people, Biden, Obama, etc. And with any luck (which failed him) not be tried as an adult.
I’m not saying it was a carefully thought-out plot-- they don’t strike me as smart/analytical enough to actually plan something. But the shootout could not have been a surprise. I can’t believe there wasn’t some intention on their part, if not to have it happen, then at least, not to prevent it. I don’t recall any school shooting in the past where the clues were so blatantly obvious to the parents… down to having the them in the principal’s office to discuss the kid’s behavior on the very day he did it.
The two different texts don’t leave me to think the parents wanted him to shoot. It sounds more like they weren’t taking it seriously in the first comment. Mom just didn’t want him getting caught with the gun at school, but personally thought it was okay to bring. It was only when he drew the picture that she realized what he was planning on doing.
The comments about the Christmas present make it sound like she was trying to do whatever her son wanted to get him to like her. Again, she didn’t take it seriously.
Don’t think that I mean she shouldn’t face legal repercussions for it. Letting your kid carry a gun to school is utterly negligent, and they should have called the cops. Everyone involved should have taken the ammunition thing more seriously, as you don’t need ammunition at school if you’re not planning to use the gun.
But, unless she was joking, I don’t think mom wanted her son to actually kill people.
No. Once you have fired a shot from a revolver, you have to either a) cock the gun manually, which revolves the cylinder to a new round (single action), or b) pull the trigger again through a longer, harder pull which revolves the cylinder (double action). With a semi-auto the cycling is done by diverted gasses from the previous shot, which pushes the slide to the rear of the weapon, ejecting the spent cartridge and allowing the springs to slam the slide forward, stripping a new round out of the magazine and chambering it. That action also cocks the weapon and makes the trigger easy to pull to start the sequence again.
It’s also been reported that the mother penned a letter to the former president thanking him for allowing her second amendment rights. I would say that she is one of dubious intellectual capacity.
I always wonder about the part of lockdown drills where you’re supposed to make it look like your classroom is empty (close windows, turn off lights and electronics, and so on). Yeah, that apparently worked once, in one school shooting. But there’s no reason to believe it’ll ever work again, especially not if every room in the school is doing it, and doing all of those things takes time that you probably don’t have.
I don’t think that’s true (I mean maybe, but there’s nothing public to suggest this). In her “don’t get caught” text, it was in regard to searching for ammo in class.
I don’t think the parents knew he had the gun at school, I just think they were extremely negligent/cavalier/stupid about their gun ownership and parenting.
