Parents of Oxford shooter on the run

originally posted by: detroitnative

originally posted by: nugget1
If A minor child commits a crime with a weapon procured from home the parents should be charged with the same crime, IMO.
There is NO reason for a child to have access to firearms. That's not responsible gun ownership by anyone's standards.

Compare: If you break into a home with a buddy and your buddy gets shot and killed, you get charged with the murder of your buddy.

With this: In this case the most they can charge the parents is involuntary manslaughter. 2 years max. 4 counts each is 8 years if they run consecutive. Yet the parents or at least one of them is/are the primary reasons this happened.

It seems to me we could pass a law (easily) where if your kid gets ahold of a gun and murders someone, you get the murder charge too. I don't see why that is so hard to understand? Am I wrong here in that thinking?

Let's say they took your kitchen knife. Same?

originally posted by: xuenchen
Something REAL fishy about this whole story.

Just a few things are oh-so convenient and deflecting away from "other" similar stories.

All too perfect and in just the right places 😃

I agree completely!

When this story first broke, I saw the headlines but did not read any of the stories. Just another shooting, I thought.

Last evening I caught coverage by OAN and by FOX, and I quickly realized the media treatment was identical. They were both reading from scripts.

It reminded me of a sort of Sandy Hook 2.0 It sounds like another official narrative allowing gun control measures to be introduced.

originally posted by: Halfswede

originally posted by: detroitnative

originally posted by: nugget1
If A minor child commits a crime with a weapon procured from home the parents should be charged with the same crime, IMO.
There is NO reason for a child to have access to firearms. That's not responsible gun ownership by anyone's standards.

Compare: If you break into a home with a buddy and your buddy gets shot and killed, you get charged with the murder of your buddy.

With this: In this case the most they can charge the parents is involuntary manslaughter. 2 years max. 4 counts each is 8 years if they run consecutive. Yet the parents or at least one of them is/are the primary reasons this happened.

It seems to me we could pass a law (easily) where if your kid gets ahold of a gun and murders someone, you get the murder charge too. I don't see why that is so hard to understand? Am I wrong here in that thinking?

Let's say they took your kitchen knife. Same?

Or your car, or your baseball bat or you taught them karate and they use that method to kill someone? Or they pushed someone in front of a moving car because they saw it on a movie you own? Or a bow and arrow or a crossbow you bought them?

Where do you stop?

I'm very curious how these events are "staged" these are real people who've lived in the community. The day after it occurred I found out my friend's son was in the hallway and saw his classmates being shot in the face and chest. He's traumatized. So, like these are fake bullets and fake injuries? Or all of it is fake? Or just the family is fake?

Very curious.

a reply to: BrujaRebooted

if the gun obviously wasnt secured in a safe with combo known only to them, then they should be charged with manslaughter

Ummm... no.

Growing up, I got a BB gun much earlier than this kid, maybe around 9 or 10 years old. I was allowed to use it for target practice, first few times with adult supervision, then unsupervised. Even unsupervised, Dad was watching. If I ever made a mistake with it, acted careless, pointed it at a pet, etc., the gun was gone.

Dad's guns were sitting in the gun rack, in plain sight, and the ammo was right beside them. I knew where they were, but I also knew they were dangerous, and that if I ever so much as touched them without permission I would never do so again. When I was about this kid's age, Dad would let me shoot his .22 rifle and .410 shotgun... with adult supervision.

This 15-year-old got a semi-automatic Sig Sauer 9mm semi-automatic handgun and was apparently allowed to use it without adult supervision and obviously without any training whatsoever, while he was exhibiting obvious signs of mental issues!

What you are espousing is not only unnecessary, but it negates the entire purpose of possessing a firearm. If someone breaks in the house intending to do harm, I suppose the homeowner should ask him politely to please wait while I open the combination to my gun safe, get the ammunition together, load the gun, and remove the trigger lock. That is several minutes of preparing the weapon, in a circumstance where seconds can mean life or death.

So no, the gun was not required to be locked up, equipped with a trigger lock, unloaded, or any of that. It was also not required to be disassembled and the pieces scattered about the house, each one encased in a concrete covering.

That's not what the issue was. The issue was that the kid first of all was not legally permitted to own a firearm until age 18, yet the social media remarks made it clear that the gun was in fact his. The gun was not legal to be carried by the kid (same age restriction). The gun was not allowed in a school zone. The parents gave the kid the gun, then within 4 days not only ignored complaints about him looking for ammunition at school, but sent a text encouraging him to do so without getting caught! When the kid was caught with a VERY disturbing drawing in class, showing pictures of a gun, a bullet, and a person with two bullet holes in them, and containing words like "the voices won't stop... help me!".... that's when the parents left him at school, without checking to see if he even had the gun, against school wishes!

And apparently that ammo lookup was successful... the kid had three magazines when apprehended. OK, owning three magazines is fine if one is hunting or target shooting... but a kid's first gun? What idiot buys him two extra mags with his first gun? So that means either the parents did it, or the kid bought them, probably online. Where did he get the money? Those are not cheap plastic toys, you know. So that would mean the parents were not even monitoring what the kid bought in their name!

The kid should have been immediately suspended and forced to leave the premises, pending a report from the counselor he was then required to see within 48 hours. That would have solved everything, without punishing millions of law-abiding gun owners with ridiculous regulations that render the ownership of a gun moot.

This was a terrible tragedy. 4 children are dead. 7 more are fighting for their lives. One kid is being charged with first degree murder as an adult (and properly so); his life outside prison bars is over as well. Two parents (and I use the term quite loosely here) are sitting in a jail cell somewhere, probably looking at the rest of their life being ruined as well, because they apparently didn't know (or care) what the holy hell they were doing. And you're upset because the gun wasn't hermetically sealed somewhere?

The problem wasn't just the gun... the gun was just the tool. The problem is someone chose to kill others without any reason whatsoever and others enabled, if not encouraged, it.

TheRedneck

a reply to: detroitnative

Compare: If you break into a home with a buddy and your buddy gets shot and killed, you get charged with the murder of your buddy.

Actually, that's Involuntary Manslaughter. Murder is only applicable to the person holding the weapon or delivering the fatal blow. Involuntary Manslaughter applies to anyone who knowingly places someone in harms way without specifically intending to kill them, and they then are killed.

With this: In this case the most they can charge the parents is involuntary manslaughter. 2 years max. 4 counts each is 8 years if they run consecutive. Yet the parents or at least one of them is/are the primary reasons this happened.

Check your laws. Involuntary Manslaughter in Michigan carries a maximum sentence of 15 years in prison, a $7500 fine, or both. If the sentences run consecutively, that's 60 years. Four charges makes the fine $30,000. These are serious charges.

It seems to me we could pass a law (easily) where if your kid gets ahold of a gun and murders someone, you get the murder charge too. I don't see why that is so hard to understand? Am I wrong here in that thinking?

Yes, you are wrong.

Parents have a legal responsibility to control their children. However, children are not automatons, and do sometimes act out. No parent has ever started a family with experience in doing so, and parenting includes so many actions and perceptions that no one can say what is right or wrong. To make a parent legally responsible for the actions of a child is to open a pandora's box of legal repercussions so severe that I doubt there would be a single parent left outside of prison within 10 years.

You have apparently never raised a child.

In this case, the parents are not responsible for what the boy did; the boy is being charged as an adult with first-degree murder. He's gone bye-bye. The parents are charged with extreme neglect, a major component of Michigan's Involuntary Manslaughter statute. Not simple neglect, and really nothing to do with the gun as I understand it. It is likely there will be charges later about that issue, but the present charges are based on ignoring warning signs, encouraging their child to break the law, and actively allowing the child to commit the murders. Those are their actions, not the boy's actions.

We do not prosecute people for the actions of others. We prosecute people for their own actions.

TheRedneck

a reply to: Salander

Uh so some sort of elaborate plot is much more plausible than nut job kids with easy access to guns and self centered parents who pay no attention to what their kids are doing?

I mean I'm all for a good conspiracy, after all I'm here, but to those families who's children have been murdered and injured in all of the school shootings I think it's disrespectful to imply it's staged or fake.

Considering in 20 years of school shootings no one has taken away your guns or really even made it any harder to get any, I think it's a reach to state it's all a plot.

a reply to: wdkirk

What worries me about this case is not that parents will be held liable for their children's actions... they already can be, but only in extreme cases. What concerns me is the anti-gun fallout. I haven't heard it yet (mainly because I do not watch MSM), but it's a-comin'! I can heat the cries of additional gun controls in homes where children are present forming in the distance... controls that will render a firearm incapable of being used for self-protection.

I'll also predict something else... school shootings have exploded since Columbine, and it was right after Columbine that schools began to be considered "gun-free zones" (aka crime permitted zones). The reasoning is obvious: if someone wants to shoot a place up, they're not going anywhere that has plenty of guns ready to be used against them... they'll go where they are the only person with a gun! If the ability to have and use guns for self-defense becomes negated through restrictions in homes with children, we'll see crime, including shootings, extend past the schools and gun-free zones to the neighborhoods. After all, if a criminal then wants to rob a house, all they need to do is check out the school buses... anywhere they stop is a safe place to rob. The law says so.

Incidentally, a bow or crossbow is also a weapon and deserves the same respect and training in use and safety as a gun.

TheRedneck

a reply to: TheRedneck

Agreed with all that, couldn't have put it better myself. The parents seem to have a completely nonchalant attitude and failed to pick up on any of the warning signs - they'd failed their child long before buying him a gun if the school reports and texts are accurate. This seems to be one of the rarer cases where the kid would also have done it with any other available weapon if he didn't have the gun as he seems to have terrible parents.

If parents or guardians teach respect and responsibiity in children they're perfectly capable of being around such things from a young age.

I had similar experience in the UK being taught to respect such things as tools rather than weapons. I was introduced to knives as tools at age five with strict rules that only relaxed once I'd proven I'd memorised, comprehended/understood all safety rules and knew that treating it like a weapon or toy would cause more emotional pain in my parents than physical pain I could cause myself or others via injury.

I was given my first proper knife for my seventh birthday but only because I'd had it drilled into me and was given my own purposefully blunted knife a few months prior to make sure I wouldn't lose it, would always let them know prior to using it and wouldn't try sneaking it out the house.

The parents seem to have jumped straight to giving him a gun with no boundaries and treated big warning signs as jokes when they should have been paying attention to their kid and acting like responsible parents instead of 'cool friendly parents'.

I'm not at all familiar with this shooting and subsequent events.
Did it all go down in time for the Maxwell trial to start?

originally posted by: detroitnative

originally posted by: nugget1
If A minor child commits a crime with a weapon procured from home the parents should be charged with the same crime, IMO.
There is NO reason for a child to have access to firearms. That's not responsible gun ownership by anyone's standards.

Compare: If you break into a home with a buddy and your buddy gets shot and killed, you get charged with the murder of your buddy.

With this: In this case the most they can charge the parents is involuntary manslaughter. 2 years max. 4 counts each is 8 years if they run consecutive. Yet the parents or at least one of them is/are the primary reasons this happened.

It seems to me we could pass a law (easily) where if your kid gets ahold of a gun and murders someone, you get the murder charge too. I don't see why that is so hard to understand? Am I wrong here in that thinking?

I disagree. The parents didn't commit the murderers. They weren't as far as we know 'in on the act'. I do however agree with the current charges against them or at least negligence.

Here is the court recording and news broadcast showing the parents in court



And here is the court appearance.

The defence lawyer is claiming that the parents HAD the gun locked up.
And the kid went ahead and unlocked it.

The lawyer is also claiming that the lawyer herself tried calling the Prosecutors office multiple times to tell her about the plan of the parents turning themselves in. And how it was supposed to take place this morning at 8 am.
But since the prosecution would not call the lawyers back, they had no idea.

If these facts are true - then I cant see how this will hold up in court.

You can hear the lawyer explaining some new facts about the circumstances starting at the 20:45 mark below

I have some questions:

When exactly did the 15 year old become an adult according to Michigan law?

Was it the moment he pulled the trigger?

How can the parents be charged in relation to the actions of a minor if he is being charged as an adult?

That this is involuntary manslaughter is outrageous. These parents need to be charged with murder II when it goes to trial. Their behavior and actions were a complete deranged indifference to the safety of their child and his classmates. They put a gun in the hand of a mentally deranged young man and set him loose to terrorize and murder.

a reply to: TheRedneck

Around troubled teen boys, yes, the gun should have been locked up.

I posted the comment before hearing that they bought the gun for him. Once again, the facts are evolving, we dont really know.

Seems like there are smart locks that will allow for as quick an entry as pulling open a drawer to grab your loaded 45 for home protection. Perhaps those can be required in a dwelling where there are children or teens. Fingerprint or voice ID.

I dont own a gun, but grew up with my father owning many. One morning at breakfast my father said, youre grounded. I said, why, how can that be? I was home alseep in bed last night. I was 14 or 15. It seems some horndog boy came looking for me, and got the bedroom windows mixed up and knocked on my fathers window, where he pulled back the curtain with the barrel of that 45. The kid bolted after saying to himself, whoops, wrong window, Im sure. Teens and guns can be a bad mix. Even when an adult is handling the gun.

a reply to: RickinVa

When exactly did the 15 year old become an adult according to Michigan law?

Was it the moment he pulled the trigger?

Yes. When a minor commits a crime that is sufficiently heinous, the law allows him/her to be charged as an adult. When he deliberately chose to fire a weapon at innocents, he forfeited his minor status. The law looks at it as him declaring himself to be an adult.

How can the parents be charged in relation to the actions of a minor if he is being charged as an adult?

One has nothing to do with the other. The boy is charged with killing four people (four counts of first-degree murder) and injuring 7 more (aggravated assault with intent to murder, 7 counts). The parents are being charged with their offenses: recklessly contributing to the death of another (involuntary manslaughter, four counts). There may be additional charges concerning the firearm being used illegally, probably against the father since he bought the weapon.

There is nothing unusual about multiple people being charged with different charges during the same crime.

TheRedneck