Extrapolating
 

One 13 year old can be totally responsible with a firearm, another not. It’s poor judgment in the case you have brought up. Maybe the parents were mountain people wanna bees transplanted to the urban world? The Montana wilderness is much different than Detroit. Some do live in the Old Disney 60s mentality you know.

Political motivation.

AND this is why they were charged. Political motivation

We don't need gun laws.

Tell that to the FAMILIES OF THE STUDENTS WHO WERE MURDERED. Get off your stereo typing bandwagon of so called crime in major US cities. You are parroting false propaganda. Do some legitimate fact checking on current crime statistics in the US. "Polly want a cracker!"

So far…..this will crack open the door for other cases

They are responsible for ignoring their son's pleas for help, not getting him proper psychiatric care, purchasing him a hand gun, and not properly securing the gun.
They definitely deserve to be held accountable, the extent of which will be debated for quite some time.

WOW! Now any parent or even grandparent could be charged with a child's crime just for being related to the child.

Basically, yes. It’s time to crack down on the inner city gang neighborhoods.

Gotta start somewhere and when a kid asks for help and dad says, “get over it,” then buys him a 9mm Sig Sauer, and he texts mom that he just got caught in class looking for ammo on line and she responds “seriously?” and asks him if he showed them a picture of his new gun, they deserve to go to jail. :spoken:

They are culpable but so are a whole bunch of other people that never see any punishment. Seems like overkill to justify a cause.

Often producing the same result.

Rural vs. Urban Mentality
 

Michigan is full of wilderness that includes great hunting, dangerous predators and wide open spaces. It also is home to Detroit and a somewhat adequate police presence. A state law would do little because of the disparity of Wolverine land where everyone wears orange in November and the recital appointments in urban Battle Creek. The real problem was the judgement by the parents. Were they living in another section of Michigan, they would have been acquitted. You can’t live in Detroit and act like you are from upstate.

Slow down. No need to panic. Each case will be charged according to the facts.

As long as they do the same to judges and politicians who allow repeat offenders and career criminals on the street.

That’s not what is happening and you know it.

They weren’t charged because they were related, but because they enabled his horrendous crime.

The Crumbleys deserve more time behind bars than what they got. They never showed any remorse toward the victims and their families. Plus, they supplied the gun to their son who they knew was unstable, never addressed the problem to get him help and refused to take him home that day. They should have taken the responsibility and gotten him help right away that day. They had so many opportunities to do the right thing, but they didn’t care.

Slight correction...

We don't need MORE gun laws... Just enforce the ones we already have on the books...

It's about time parents are held accountable for the actions of their children. Going forward the child's behavior should be reviewed and what actions did the parents take to address the child's issues. Parents who have done nothing and ignored these issues should be prosecuted. I wonder if in the past if anyone who lost their child in a school shooting civilly sued the parents of the shooter.

Nice emotional argument that has nothing to do with the facts to which you responded...

"So called crime in major US cities"... Bwahahaha!

The Sandy Hook parents sued the gun manufacturer...

Which is just as silly as suing Ford because of a drunk driver...

Michigan is hardly the example to be holding the rest of the nation to. Now Florida on the other hand......

Interesting social experiment potential: These gangbangers have no regard for their own future. Most have the expectation that they will be dead or in prison by the time they are 35. So they don't care. Now maybe if they had to be concerned about their mother ending up in prison because of their actions, they would think twice before pulling the trigger.

What does any of this, particularly the bolded, have to do with this case?

If only. Unfortunately, each case is charged according to the agenda.

i think you hit a key part of this equation, -the gun was NOT locked up. add that to a kid asking for help (on his math test, yet) and you had a lethal combination. yes, the parents hold some responsibility for denying the boy help, but i can't help but wonder like some here have, is this going to be a new precedent? and if so, we're going to see the jails filled with sorrowful parents.

that's a really good point

i would think they didn't want to loose time @ work. one of them would've had to take the day off, & spend time with a kid they already had no time for.

wow, a tad uptight, are we? your comment comes off as bullying another poster

It's a Slippery Slope and potential can of worms opened up here. This case was murder but it's only a matter of time before overzealous DA's and lawyers try to get parents blamed for all sorts of crimes down the road. Can't happen? keep watching. The stories will start to flow soon enough.

Lost in all the hyperbole here is one very significant fact. The Crumbleys were NOT convicted of any gun crime. They were convicted of involuntary manslaughter under Michigan Penal Code 950.321 (criminally negligent homicide) which is defined under that statute as "Unintentionally killing another person that results from recklessness or criminal negligence, or from an unlawful act that is a misdemeanor or low-level felony (such as DUI)". The penalty is a maximum of up to 15 years in prison, a fine of $7,500.00, or both. The Crumbleys got socked with the maximum. The kid got put away for life.

But...what if the method of death was NOT a firearm? What if the Crumbley kid, who for the sake of argument we assume did not have a driver's license and was thus not legally able to drive, had snatched the car keys without the parents' knowledge and taken four friends joyriding, resulting in an accident that killed the four of them but left him relatively unscathed? Still parental neglect. Still four dead kids. Still just as chargeable under the statute as the Crumbleys were.

Even in the off chance that they WERE charged had their son killed with a car rather than a gun, would it have made national news to the extent that the actual case did?

If the answer as anything but yes, then the conclusion is unavoidable. The merits of the case notwithstanding, the reason for all the media hype and public hysteria was not the act used, but the tool. And hysteria makes for poor law.

I agree. If they committed a gun crime, then charge them with that, not manslaughter. They didn't kill anyone.

Apply the same standard to shootings in Chicago, Philly, NYC etc and I'd be ok with it. This verdict says a few things, none of them good.

excellent post from 3rdof5! allow me to go a step further: :posting: i watch a LOT of court-tv and ended up seeing quite a bit of evidence, photos, etc. mostly everytime they showed a pic of ethan, the poor kid looked like he needed a hot shower with plenty of soap. i'm not trying to be mean, i know teenage boys are not the neatest animal of the world, but somewhere along the way, it's the parents job to guide the boy into routine hygiene. my point is: people with mental issues let personal care go, among other factors. you can tell by the kid's appearance the parents were lacking in those duties, and leads me to believe they were seriously negligent in other areas as well. this may explain why instead of dealing with their son, they bought him a gun. why? what positive acts did they think would be accomplished? did mom think they could bond over a shooting gallery? idk--thoughts??

There is a HUGE difference between guns, which are specifically designed to kill people and a car whose primary purpose is transportation. Guns should be locked up. Car keys should not.

Clearly these parents ignored warning signs and warnings from the school. Why the school didn’t take further steps is worrisome. It is sad all around but especially for three lives lost forever and for their loved ones…not to mention the trauma it left with those who witnessed the shootings.

Of course it's inconsistent ! But there are a number of factors that effect the "inconsistency". You and I may not agree with these, but never the less they exist. Among them are: The parents of "wandering" teens in large cities are often VERY difficult to locate believe it or not. Uninvolved parents often report unlisted and non working phones number of school administrations, and OFTEN even report non existent, or outdated, addresses. Add to this that young men and women involved in the gang lifestyle do NOT attend school on a regular basis, so locating the parents is not as easy as in the Michigan case. Yes, the Michigan couple was "hiding" in some sense, but both worked and had a CLEAR trail for authorities to track down, they had a valid home address, the father had a fire arm permit, they had working phone numbers, their son WAS registered with a legal name and address and did attend school on a regular basis, and so on. Tracking down teens who do NOT fit this profile is not easy, not at all. Add to that, it's been decades since, as a society, we held school attendance and constant vigilance as a PRIMARY goal. Mandatory 12 years of schooling is only a suggestion in our present culture, and there certainly are no sworn truant officers that my mother AND grandmother told me about being so fearful of, they never even considered "skipping" out of even a single class when they were in school ! Their parents were easy to locate, as were all parents in our city of about 130,000. Yes, the enforcement is inconsistent and the problem will continue most likely, until we the people STOP blaming everything on "the politicians" or the "federal government", and make safety of our youth, and make parents responsible for their (minor) children's behavior as it once was in our culture, and still is in a number of cultures. It's just not a priority in ours at present. I will add, as I watched the entire trial on TV, then the sentencing, I thought, IF they would hold a few more parents responsible int he future, would the "tide begin to change", would our population LIKE the idea and begin to demand it ? ??

Thanks. I agree with what you said. But, the inconsistency in this case is so blatant that I consider it a travesty. These parents were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison for something that almost every other parent who does the same thing are not even charged. They should have had a better lawyer.

Michigan has a law that holds parents responsible for property damage intentionally done by their children. This case is not a first in Michigan where parents have been held responsible for the actions of their children.
Perhaps if the parents of the kids who commited the slaughter in Colombine had been in some way held responsible, some of the school shootings that have happened since would have been avoided. I think that the people of Oakland County Miching where I precticed law for 40 years decided that enough was enough.