Interesting statistical analysis.
Ah, but this kid was already at school, not packing up to go home. And, his focus was totally on the weapon. He had been chastised for shopping ammo during class. I suspect there was not much else in the backpack. But, that is currently unknown.
I mean, if we can search the bags of every man, woman and child getting on an airplane or going into a stadium, with absolutely no evidence they may have a weapon in there or be planning to kill anyone, I’d say when a kid puts together a note that includes a picture of a bloody execution-by-gun and the words “blood everywhere, the thoughts won’t stop. Help me. My life is useless. The world is dead,” AND he was caught by a teacher searching for ammo in class the day before, checking out his backpack is entirely warranted.
The parents are negligent, but the school officials who met with them dropped the ball that day too.
That is quite the speculation there. Most kids carry many books and other items around all day these days.
Just move along, nothing to see here
Did they react that way? Or did they call the parents and ask him to pick him up, but they refused?
I’m genuinely asking, reporting on this story has been a bit mixed
You are correct. There is a case where the weapon would not have been detectable.
No, but some posts have.
In this thread? I haven’t seen any.
How nice to use such a well poisoning term.
If all those things are true then those parents aren’t only culpable but also insane, if not downright evil. That mom definitely sounds like she has a couple of screws loose.
I’d say that the parents definitely hold a very large share of blame.
Depending on information that has yet to come to light, the school might or might not also have some share of blame, but in any event, their share is definitely far lower than the parents’.
I’d guess 60% the shooter, 39% the parents and 1% the school.
Most principals aren’t going to look at a troubled kid sitting there with his parents in the principal’s office and think “you know what he’s probably packing right now” the parents should have had a clue since they just bought him a gun and there was at least the dumb kid chance that he brought it to school to show his friends but I don’t see any way for a school official to know. Maybe standard procedure should be any kid linked to something violent gets searched but its not today so aside from them feeling terrible I don’t see any real blame going their direction.
I need to review the timeline.
I believe it’s obvious that both the parents and the kid are at fault. But, I also believe the school may have held the situation too much at arms length. I don’t envy them their position, between the school bureaucracy and the realities of dealing with a teen population.
This touches on something I’d wondered about: is it possible that the school administrators tried to (or asked to) search the bag, and met resistance from the parents?
I certainly wouldn’t put it past these two assholes to snarl, “You can search my son’s bag when you pry it from his cold dead hands”.
I wouldn’t be too harsh with a teacher or principal who gave in to that. They’re paid to teach kids, not fight armed psychopaths barehanded.
As @What_Exit has noted, you are missing a lot on the attempt at finding equal or similar blame here.
In one charter school I helped administer in the past, your attempt here fails as the school did not have lockers (a choice of the administration made because of the Columbine massacre), all the backpacks were left in the office in boxes, those boxes were brought out at the end of the day to the pickup area, an advantage of being a small school. (Many students still got backpacks with items like clothes that they liked to use after leaving school, or other items that they could use once outside the campus).
So while there were agreements signed beforehand about what they could not bring to school, the absence of lockers meant that there was no signed agreement about opening backpacks, but there was one way to do it as the parents trusted the administration: in more than one occasion when something suspicious was likely to be in a backpack, the parents or guardians were alerted and came to look inside the bags in front of the administrator.
In the Oxford case, it is more likely that the parents would have refused to comply with the administration.
In that case they should have allowed the parents to leave the grounds with their child and his bag.
How is the other side spinning this?
I agree. But nothing she did seems particularly put of line with the general Pro Gun stance. Barbaric and insane as it seems to me, there are TONS of parents who buy firearms for their children.
Assigning blame isn’t necessarily zero-sum algebra. I don’t know why it has to add up to 100%. I see no problem with assigning the parents 98% of the blame and assigning the school 65%, while also assigning the kiddo himself a solid 80% of the blame. (Allowing, perhaps, that the kiddo may not be 100% blame if he’s seriously fucked up from his home environment. Or maybe he was just teased too much because his name is Crumbley?)
That is barbaric and insane. Any clue what the numbers might be?
Most of those parents have well-adjusted children, and in addition take gun safety seriously. The problems of this particular child make all the difference in the world.