Long answer, you are using hindsight. I am not convinced they had reasonable suspicion unless you make “reasonable” meaningless. Right or wrong owning and shooting guns is legal in this country and teens can shoot guns. Is browsing ammo on your phone really that big of a red flag?
The school staff clearly ran through their options. Called the parents. Quizzed the kid, reviewed his record and so on. Are you going to Monday quarterback them?
Honestly, I’d assume it because it’s really fucking hard for a 15 year old to get a gun if not from a friend or family member. If his family insisted they didn’t have any guns, that he had no chance of access, it would be very unlikely that he had one. And a parent lying about a suicidal kid having access to a gun seems as unlikely as a parent lying about a fatal peanut allergy. Why would they possibly do that?
I agree with both points. But zero-tolerance, equitably applied, has to be part of the answer. When there is a pervasive out-of-control gun culture in American society (see my post above) schools either have to enforce extraordinary protective measures, or else just resign themselves to the inevitable carnage.
I’m not so much Monday-morning-quarterbacking as I am recalling personal experience with what were essentially zero-tolerance school policies even back in the days when my own son was in elementary and middle school, and they’re probably even stricter now. And this I would remind you is in a country that doesn’t generally have a problem with guns and even less with school shootings.
I think this is an important consideration and deserves more discussion.
The part that makes me not so sure about this is the kid had to be really close to the line for this event to tip him over the edge. So close that, even if this had not happened, he is likely to be tipped over the line soon anyway. Something would have triggered him in the near future. High school is an emotionally charged place with super emotional kids.
But, we have to try. Maybe a few more days would be the difference. We can never know (although, given his terrible parents, I am not seeing this happening here).
Check the potential? Is that cop-speak or military jargon? The thing is that in everyday society, he wasn’t “a potential.” He was a kid. A troubled kid, perhaps, but it is not easy to figure out where to draw the line, when, and with whom. These are complex questions, not easy ones.
Well, actually, if you want something easily carried and used, what kills best is a gun. That’s why we outfit our soldiers with firearms, despite the fact it’s pretty much what the enemy expects.
I am not a prosecutor who plea bargains serious crimes down. I am not a judge that hands out lenient or suspended sentences or allows time for multiple violations to be served concurrently instead of consecutively. I am not on the probation and parole board that releases convicts before they have served a significant portion of any sentence they have received.
Those are the people that need to answer that question. Passing a bunch more laws will accomplish nothing but make the masses feel like something has been done when nothing of any substance has been done.
We’re on opposite sides of the gun-control debate, but in this respect I fully agree with you. One can agree or disagree with the extraordinary pervasiveness of guns in American culture, their incredible numbers and their easy availability (relative to international standards), but the reality of it remains an indisputable fact. Once again, check out the pic and links at this post. So the question is, what should schools do about it?
Given that this thread is not another gun control debate, and recognizing that in any case laws and culture can take a very long time to change, whereas the problem is here and now and has been for many years, what should schools do?
My view is that schools are practically alone in the front lines of protecting students against gun violence, and that the answer is zero-tolerance polices to anything that might even remotely be perceived to be a threat of yet another school shooting. Absolutely zero tolerance. And airport security is an excellent model for it. The interiors of airport security perimeters and onboard aircraft are kept secure with thorough security measures including a variety of metal detectors and other screening devices and other special tools, and manual searches. Want to joke about hijacking or having a bomb? Get hauled in for hours of interrogation and possible arrest. If airports can do these things, so can schools. In the USA, in my opinion, schools not only can do it, they must do it.
ISTM the matter of the thread itself is about the responsibility of the parents (and possibly the school authorities) in having intervened with the disturbed teen before anything violent happened, and that is not exclusively and IMO not even primarily about the gun – but rather about a youth sending out more red flags than a May Day Parade in Moscow in 1961, and the Michigan 2021 Parents Of The Year, confronted with it right then and there, saying “nope, you people at the school are making too big a deal of this, we are too busy to take care of it”. AND on top of that giving hima gun for a holiday gift and, by all signs, not supervising where he was keeping it.
As was stated very well:
Meanwhile…
Ah, but… In the past decade, “Zero Tolerance” took great heat and many of its applications have faced discredit over things like the aforementioned “finger gun”, or girls sharing a Midol, or a yearbook picture featuring weaponry, or even grade schoolers being taken down and cuffed. “Zero Tolerance” policies became widely seen by many parents, not without justification, as “Zero Making Judgement Calls” policies meant not to protect the students but to prevent you from suing the district if your kid was treated unjustly. That is why I believe Ascenray brought up the phrase.
As I posted in another discussion and was touched upon earlier in this thread, ISTM that at the very best and most charitable, these Parental Morons could have been thinking along the lines of “oh, those bureaucrats at the school wasting our time, what teenage boy does not have violent fantasies or goes around saying that he hates his life, it’s something he’ll get over”. But more likely the mindset was “&*&^%$ snowflakes, sooo scared about a picture of a gun…”
Of course, the way they proceeded to just leave him in the care of the Public Defender and haul outta town is… suggestive, that there may be some interesting shit that will come up in the investigation and that they did not want to stick around for.
My kids typically lugged their books all over at school, though they were not permitted to have backpacks with them during the day. If they had their backpacks at all, they’d have been loaded down with textbooks.
I absolutely agree that the school lost an opportunity to nip this in the bud, given the rather clear signs the kid was giving off - it’s unfortunate as hell that they failed to do so, but it’s not their fault the kid went postal. I’m quite sure that there will be lawsuits against them, nonetheless.
The parents, on the other hand… criminal negligence at a minimum. Is there evidence that they knew he was having emotional problems, prior to the incident with the drawing?
The article mentions that the parents did not ask where the handgun was. Why on earth would they? Would you expect them to ask the school about it? Their kid? That part seems like an odd commentary.
Flashing back to my own kids’ experience in middle school: my son (mild autism) was being tormented at school. Not physically, as a rule, but teased by kids both at his level, and at the high school level, as word had gotten around that this weird kid would freak out most amusingly if you sang the ABC song around him. At one point, he said to a counselor “I wish I could bring a gun to school and shoot them!”.
Fortunately for him, the school did not take the overkill approach of tossing him out on his ear - as that would not have worked out well for him - and we were very, very glad to be able to tell them that we did NOT own any weapons nor did he otherwise have access to any.
I think it is pretty common even for older people to make statements in this direction. I’ve seen statements almost, not quite, like this — maybe hoping he dies in a les specified way — on this board, concerning a past U.S. President.
Question: what is the sentence range the parents are looking at if convicted? I’ve read through this thread over the past couple of days, but I don’t recall seeing it. (Apologies if it’s there somewhere and I’ve missed it.)
Most school districts can’t afford to properly pay their teachers or buy enough textbooks to go around. Where do you propose we find the money to turn every public school in the country into the Baghdad Green Zone?