Accountability Rarely Considered for Parents of Mass Shooters
Parents are sometimes charged with negligence or manslaughter after a child accidentally shoots themselves or someone else, but rarely-so after their child carries out a shooting spree.
Landwebs
As more of the country’s deadliest mass shootings are carried out by killers in their teens and early 20s, prosecutors and researchers are focusing on parents to unravel how their sons are radicalized, what interventions might have stopped them, and whether parents who disregard obvious warnings or provide guns to their children should be held criminally responsible, reports the New York Times. While parents are sometimes charged with negligence or manslaughter after a child accidentally shoots themselves or someone else, it is far rarer for them to be charged after their children carry out a shooting spree.
However, that may be changing as law enforcement looks for new ways to combat a surge in mass shootings. An Illinois resident was charged in that state with illegally providing his son the gun he used to shoot up a waffle house in Nashville. Michael Doubet, a lawyer for the father of the Waffle House gunman, said a distinction must be drawn between the responsibilities of the parents of a juvenile offender and of the parents of someone who carries out a mass shooting as a legal adult. See also: Highland Park Shooter’s Dad Under Investigation.
