Jennifer Crumbley, the mother of school shooter Ethan Crumbley, was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter on Feb. 6, 2024. During the Nov. 30, 2021 attack, Ethan Crumbley killed four students and injured six students and a teacher.

Jennifer Crumbley and her husband, James Crumbley, had given their 15-year-old son a firearm as a Christmas present and had taken him to the gun range multiple times. The verdict marks the first time a parent of a school shooter has been held criminally responsible for the actions carried out by their child.

Straight Arrow News contributor Adrienne Lawrence is not surprised by the verdict and agrees that Jennifer Crumbley is criminally responsible for her son’s actions.

Being a parent is a significant undertaking. You’re responsible for the well-being, safety, protection of another human being, a growing human, mind you, that requires guidance and care. When people decide to become parents, they are ultimately responsible for their child. And I’d also say that they’re responsible for their child’s actions when they encourage or cultivate the behavior or even the situation to create the behavior.

And that’s why I wasn’t surprised last week when a Michigan jury found Jennifer Crumbley guilty of involuntary manslaughter. She didn’t kill anyone herself, but her 15-year-old son Ethan did. It was in a mass shooting at his high school in 2021. Crumbley and her husband had bought the boy the gun, despite his vocalized cries for help and psychological disturbances.

In this landmark prosecution, the jury got it right. Parents who make guns available to their children should be held criminally liable for any harm that ensues — hard stop. Being responsible for the gun-related crimes of your child should not be controversial — that’s primarily because a child should not have a gun. A gun is designed to cause great bodily harm to another — to take a life. It’s not like a knife. It doesn’t serve multiple purposes. You can’t make a three-course meal with a Beretta or prepare firewood with an AK. Guns are solely designed to be deadly weapons.

Given their inherently grave nature, entrusting a firearm to a minor should be presumably negligent regardless of whether that minor is learning to hunt, happens to be mature for their age, or is struggling with mental illness like Ethan Crumbley was.