Will prosecuting the mom of a school shooter make the US safer from guns?

Michigan teenager Ethan Crumbley is in prison and serving a life sentence without parole after being convicted of carrying out the worst school shooting in the state's history.

This week, a jury found that mother Jennifer Crumbley should also be held accountable for the 2021 shooting, in which her son killed four students and injured seven others at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit. She faces up to 15 years in prison.

Her husband James Crumbley will face the same charges of involuntary manslaughter in court next month. The Crumbleys are the first parents in the US to be charged in connection with a school shooting.

But will their prosecution help make the US safer from gun violence? Many experts say the jury is still out on that one.

"This case sits right on the edge," Mark Ashton, a retired attorney based in Pennsylvania, told TRT World.

"The jury's really being handed a policy case here. They're going to decide whether the law says that this woman should (have been) criminally charged — and whether or not this is worthy of being convicted."

Warning signs
During Jennifer Crumbley's trial, prosecutors asserted that she should be found criminally guilty of manslaughter for knowing her son had mental health issues, buying him a firearm anyway and failing to secure it.

Crumbley testified that she did not know about her son's mental distress and that it was her husband's responsibility to lock up the gun.

However, prosecutors said there were many warning signs. They pointed to text messages Ethan had sent friends saying he was experiencing hallucinations and hearing voices. He also said he had asked his parents to take him to a doctor, but his dad gave him pills and told him to "suck it up," while his mom laughed at him.

The school had also notified the parents that Ethan had done an online search for ammunition on his phone. In response, Jennifer Crumbley texted her son: "LOL I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught," prosecutors relayed.

Finally, the morning of the shooting, both parents were called into school to discuss a disturbing picture their son had drawn in math class. It was of a handgun with the words "blood everywhere," "the thoughts won’t stop" and "help me."

During this meeting, the parents did not mention that their son owned a gun and declined to take him home against the school counsellor's recommendation, citing work obligations. Hours later, Ethan Crumbley removed the gun from his backpack and began shooting his peers. He was 15 years old at the time.

Speaking to TRT World, Paula Roby, an attorney who has tried jury cases for 24 years, said this fact and others make the case against the Crumbleys "solid."

Roby, who is a partner at Day, Rettig Martin in Iowa, continued:

"Parents have a legal duty to prevent minor children from causing injury or death to others. They had a child who needed help, and instead of getting him that help, they gave him virtually unfettered access to a deadly weapon.

"They went to the school that tragic day because Ethan wrote very disturbing things on his work. They didn’t take him to the hospital, a doctor, or even home. They didn’t check his backpack for the gun, or inquire as to whether he had it with him. They didn’t even engage with him during the meeting. I believe it’s all too clear that this shooting was foreseeable and preventable," she said.

Other experts warn that this case could set a precedent against parents of teens who are found guilty of any violent behaviour.

In an interview last year, Florida-based Cooley Law School professor Jeffrey Swartz said, "It's an attempt to set a standard to say that parents who are bad parents are responsible for the acts of their children. And bad parenting is not a crime."

Speaking to TRT World, Ashton, who wrote about the Crumbley case for his former law firm Fox Rothchild, appeared to agree.

"My overall impression of this is, most people don't really have an appreciation for the mental health issues they have going on in (the Crumbley) house. But they think, 'it couldn't happen to me, my kid would never do that.' It's a classic situation, you assume that until you're wrong."

Leading cause of death
Whether the Crumbleys' case is one of parental neglect or criminal liability remains to be seen.

There's also the bigger question of how their prosecution will impact the gun violence problem in the United States. At the very least, it has already raised awareness among parents.

Speaking to Time shortly after the Michigan shooting, Moms Demand Action (MDA) founder Shannon Watts said, "It (charging the Crumbleys) really should be a wake-up call for all gun owners. We wouldn’t have school shootings if children couldn’t access guns."

Indeed, up to 90 percent of the guns that are used in youth suicides, unintentional shootings among children and school shootings by children are acquired from their homes or the homes of relatives or friends, according to the Giffords Law Center.

Since 2020, gun violence has been the number one cause of death among Americans under the age of 18 years old (with automobile accidents falling to second).

At the time of the shooting at Oxford High School, Michigan had no secure storage law, though it introduced one last year.

These types of laws require gun owners to lock up their firearms and hold them accountable if their weapons get into the hands of children.

While effective, such legislation only treats the symptom, not the true problem, said Dominic Erdozain, author of One Nation Under Guns.

Speaking to TRT World, he said that in the US, the focus is too often on reducing gun violence, but not about reducing guns.

"I think there is a danger, with all the emphasis on 'safe storage' and 'responsible' ownership, that people forget that guns are lethal weapons — made and designed to kill. Until Americans see guns as guns, not symbols of freedom, little will change."

In the US, there are more guns (400 million) than people (330 million). However, six out of 10 Americans think it's too easy to get a gun in the US, and the same number of people favour stricter gun laws, according to a 2023 Pew Research poll.

Still, support for gun reform has fluctuated in recent years, and Erdozain said the Crumbleys' trials could have a negative impact on the effort.

"It will depend on the outcome. The nature of the problem is such that any step toward greater accountability tends to harden convictions on gun rights and the alleged association of guns and freedom. There is always the potential (indeed likelihood) for a backlash."

Roby, the trial attorney, was also sceptical that a guilty verdict in the Crumbley trial would translate into legislative change.

"What I believe it will do is cause parents like the Crumbleys to be far more careful. Should it be that way? No. It shouldn’t take the fear of prison to wake parents up to the fact that making deadly weapons not only available to their minor children, but part of the fabric of the family’s very identity, is a terrible idea. Still, this may be what it takes. If that tide begins to turn, the legislature may see a path toward meaningful reform after all."

According to Erdozain, it may be young people themselves who lead the charge.

"I'm confident that a younger generation, (who) has lived through these school shootings, is beginning to make that change. The legal route is important, but I think a cultural shift toward a more basic distaste and intolerance of guns will be more powerful in the long run."