“Are you safe?” “Please be careful.” “I love you.” These are the messages that parents send upon hearing that their child is involved in a school shooting. However, in the case of the 2021 Oxford High School shooting, the mother of school shooter Ethan Crumbley texted her son “Ethan don’t do it.” While the parents of school shooters often share in the shock of the rest of the nation and tragically lament that they were unaware that their child could commit such atrocities, the parents of Ethan Crumbley knew what their son was planning. They knew that the shooter was their son and that he was using the very gun that they had bought him that Christmas, with the ammo that they had bought him the day before. In light of these facts, parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were subsequently charged and convicted of involuntary manslaughter, the first parents in American history to ever be charged in a school shooting case. 

This historic decision has sparked conversations surrounding the role and efficacy of parental responsibility laws, which are often viewed as discriminatory, arbitrary, and ineffective in practice. Additionally, it has catalyzed discussions regarding the precedent this case will set, serving as a fundamental decision in how the courts will view parental liability in the future, whether in cases within or beyond the scope of gun violence. However, the largest takeaway from the conviction of the Crumbley parents is the necessity of a federal law imposing secure storage laws across all states, protecting the lives of the thousands of children who lose their lives to gun violence each year. 

On November 30, 2021, Ethan Crumbley brought a gun to his high school in Oxford Township, Michigan and murdered four of his classmates, injuring seven more. Just a few hours before the tragedy occurred, Ethan had a meeting with his parents and the Dean of Students at his school regarding distressing, gun-related images that Ethan had drawn in his notebook as well as the disturbing videos of mass shootings he had been watching on his phone during class that very day. When the dean told the Crumbley parents that Ethan needed to see a mental health professional that same day, Jennifer and James refused, noting that they needed to return to work. That was not the only time that the Crumbleys ignored signs of their son's deteriorating mental health: texts exchanged between Ethan and his friend revealed that his parents told him to “suck it up” when he expressed his concerning mental condition and that “[his] parents [would not] listen to [him] about help or a therapist” [1]. In addition to ignoring warning signs about Ethan’s poor mental health and refusing to get him the proper assistance in time, the Crumbleys likewise bought their son both the gun and the bullets that he used to commit the massacre. The prosecutor in this landmark case would come to say that while hundreds of worried parents rushed to pick up their children from the nearby supermarket where they were sheltering, the Crumbleys were the only ones who went home to look for their guns. 

Subsequently, the Crumbleys were charged, tried, and convicted of involuntary manslaughter, receiving a fifteen-year sentence due to their gross negligence in the matter. There have been other instances in which parents of mass shooters have knowingly or unknowingly enabled their children's actions. For instance, the father of the 2022 Highland Park shooter sponsored his son’s gun permit despite a suicide attempt and multiple homicidal threats [2]. As about 75% of recent school shooters obtained their guns from their homes [3], the question of parental responsibility is raised: to what extent can parents be held accountable for their children’s dangerous actions, particularly when they play a role in enabling them?

All fifty states maintain some degree of parental responsibility laws that hold parents liable for their children's actions, and while most of these laws institute civil punishments, some states' parental responsibility laws implement criminal charges. Civil parental liability is generally invoked on the grounds of property damage or other malicious acts and usually results in financial compensation to the affected party. These laws draw legitimacy through the principles of negligent supervision and the family purpose doctrine, a court-manufactured legal doctrine that indicates that the owner of a family car is the one who is liable for any damages caused by that car when driven by other family members [4]. Parental responsibility laws that fall into the domain of civil punishment are wide-ranging: whether imposing liability for the negligent driving of a child, damage to property, injury to person(s), retail theft, and more, civil parental responsibility laws broadly vary by state. Criminal parental liability, on the other hand, occurs when a child has committed a criminal violation, which includes firearm access. It is this statute that provides the foundation for the charges brought against the Crumbley parents, with Michigan state law noting there is “liability imposed on parents when [their] child willfully or maliciously causes injury to person or damage to property" [5]. Parental responsibility laws have a long history within the United States, with the first instance occurring in Hawaii in 1846 and all other states eventually following suit with different variations of the laws. They are likewise occasionally enacted on a more local level for specific matters, such as when Kamala Harris controversially posed misdemeanor penalties for parents whose children regularly missed school during her time as San Francisco District Attorney as part of a truancy program [6]. However, the effectiveness and application of parental responsibility laws are frequently called into question.

Despite the wide array of parental responsibility laws across all fifty states, research shows that these laws are seldom enforced, and are more symbolic than substantive [7]. These laws are often criticized for being ineffective, limiting parental autonomy, and removing the focus from more effective solutions to issues of child delinquency. Research indicates that parental responsibility laws do not deter youth populations from engaging in illegal activity, are often perceived by the local communities as being hostile, and do not receive general support from the public [8]. Similarly, critics emphasize that these laws are often enforced arbitrarily, resulting in inequity and discriminatory enforcement. For instance, Kamala Harris’s aforementioned parental responsibility policy faced immense backlash for largely targeting parents of color [9], whose children are 40% more likely to be chronically absent from school [10]. While parental responsibility laws are common across the United States, they are ineffective in deterring illegal behavior, are disliked by the public, and may be considered discriminatory in application.

Nonetheless, the conviction of the Crumbley parents sets a unique precedent not only for cases involving mass shootings, but perhaps also for lower-level criminal or civil cases in which a parent would be considered responsible for their children’s actions. This could become a groundbreaking legal precedent set for future large and small gun-violence-related incidents, or even cases that are not in the scope of gun violence. For instance, there may be an increase in parents who are implicated if their child commits more minor crimes such as theft, vandalism, or drug-related offenses. While the Crumbley decision may not spur states to add additional parental responsibility statutes to their legal codes, it may encourage courts and prosecutors to be more active in putting the existing ones into practice. Furthermore, some experts in the field believe that this case could have a potential deterrent effect, possibly helping to prevent mass shootings if parents know to pay more attention to warning signs and properly secure their firearms [11]. If parents perceive that their negligent behavior toward their children may have direct consequences for themselves, then perhaps more parents will pay attention to their children’s potentially dangerous behavior. The United States experiences an unparalleled amount of mass shootings, so perhaps a precedent that implicates more people than just the perpetrator will produce a deterrent effect. While evidence suggests that parental responsibility laws do not generally function as a deterring force, the occurrence of such a high-profile decision as that of the Crumbleys may alter this fact. 

Moreover, one of the foundational reasons for the Crumbley parents' guilty verdict was that they not only provided their son with a firearm, but likewise failed to store this firearm in their home properly. Thus, this case emphasizes the need for all states to adopt safe storage laws. A mere eight states have a safe storage or gun lock requirement, which provides clear requirements for how firearms should be stored: locked, unloaded, and inaccessible to those who are not authorized to use them, including children [12]. Robust safe storage laws likewise impose consequences for failing to secure a firearm properly, and for when a child can or is likely to gain access to the firearm. Similarly, only 34 states employ a less strict version of secure storage laws, called Child Access To Firearms Prevention Laws, which only penalizes gun owners after a child gains access to the firearm. As Child Access To Firearms Prevention Laws only impose consequences after a potential tragedy has occurred, they are significantly less effective in ensuring that parents responsibly store their firearms, but are undoubtedly a better option than no prevention mechanisms at all. Although it is unlikely for law enforcement to perform checks on individual households to ensure that safe storage laws are properly adhered to, research nonetheless illustrates that states that require Secure Storage or Child Access Prevention experience a considerably lower rate of gun violence than states who do not, demonstrating their imperativeness [13]. 

Safe storage laws have a tangible impact on reducing gun-related deaths amongst the youth population, resulting in an 85% decrease of unintentional injuries in households that lock their firearms and ammunition [14]. Three out of four children know where their parents store their guns, and one out of three of these children admit to handling that gun when unsupervised [15]. Research from the American Academy of Pediatrics demonstrated that if just 20% more homes began locking their firearms, 72 to 135 child and adolescent deaths would be prevented in a year, proving the value of secure storage laws [16]. Implementing these laws across all fifty states would have a profound impact on reducing the number of children’s gun-related deaths, and therefore, a federal secure storage law is necessary. 

In 2019, the Connecticut State Senate passed “Ethan’s Law” following the death of 15-year-old Ethan Song who died of an unintentional firearm accident that occurred when he and his friend were playing with the friend’s unsecured gun. As Connecticut had no secure storage laws at the time, the friend's father, to whom the gun belonged, faced no legal consequences for failing to secure his firearm, which was ultimately what caused Ethan’s tragic death. Subsequently, Connecticut passed Ethan’s Law, requiring all firearms to be safely stored in homes with minors. A federal version of the law, S.173 and H.R.660, has been proposed and would establish a framework for regulating the secure storage of guns at the federal, state, and tribal levels. At the federal level, the bill establishes statutory requirements for firearms at residential properties to be safely stored if a minor is likely to gain access to it or if a resident is ineligible to possess a firearm, with violations subject to criminal penalties. This bill would be critical in helping to prevent countless children’s deaths, and could have been a preventative force in Ethan Crumbley’s deadly pursuit.

Overall, the landmark decision of convicting the parents of school shooter Ethan Crumbley represents a fundamental shift in the sphere of school shootings and parental responsibility. Jennifer and James Crumbley exhibited an extraordinary level of negligence, ignoring multiple warning signs regarding their son's dangerous behavior, resulting in the tragic death of four high school students and the life-long suffering of their families, classmates, and peers. In addition to providing Ethan with the murder weapon, the Crumbleys dismissed concerns regarding his mental health, therefore enabling his violent behavior. Due to their landmark conviction, this case raises foundational questions regarding parental responsibility and establishes a precedent for how courts may deal with school shootings or smaller-scale crimes committed by minors in the future. Furthermore, it facilitates a discussion regarding the necessity of secure storage laws. With firearms consistently being the leading cause of death among children and 4.6 million children living in a home with at least one firearm that is unlocked, a federal law such as Ethan’s Law that requires parents to maintain safe gun practices is necessary, if not for their children then for themselves.