James and Jennifer Crumbley face four counts of involuntary manslaughter each after their son, Ethan, killed four students at Oxford High School in 2021.
Ethan Crumbley was 15 when he opened fire at his suburban Detroit high school in November 2021, armed with a semi-automatic handgun that his parents helped purchase as an early Christmas present.
The rampage left four students dead and several others injured, shattering the close-knit community of Oxford, Michigan, and resulting last month in a life sentence without parole for Crumbley, who was charged as an adult and pleaded guilty to two dozen counts, including for murder and terrorism.
Now, scrutiny falls on the teenager’s parents.
In a rare attempt to hold the parents of a school shooter criminally responsible, James Crumbley, 47, and his wife, Jennifer, 45, are each facing four counts of involuntary manslaughter and will be tried separately, with a trial set to open with jury selection in Oakland County on Tuesday.
Just to be clear, nearly every (edit: modern) handgun you’ve ever seen, pistols included, is almost certainly a semi-automatic. I’m sure there are exceptions, but AFAIK, any (edit: modern) handgun that’s not a revolver (or something weird like a derringer) is going to be semi-auto.
As someone who grew up around guns (but is not currently a gun owner), and if I planned to buy my child a gun prior to adulthood, I probably would start my kid with a BB gun at a younger age, then likely a revolver before going to semi-auto, but I wouldn’t feel like either of those are choices that are the only safe ones. (If we’ve cleared the hurdle of considering a 15 year old owning a gun to be safe at all.)
Revolver: