Ages ago, a friend of mine's son was arrested for shoplifting. He was a good kid, he just did something dumb, and his parents wanted him to pay the price for it. They ended up having to pay out, too, because they were held partially responsible under the law at the time.
I thought that was kind of dumb, especially as I know this kid was never brought up to think this was acceptable.
When parents started getting prosecuted for mass shootings, though, it seemed to take that little trivial matter over a CD and ramped it up to 11.
Now, the father of the shooter at a Madison Christian school is going to stand trial for his potential role in facilitating the shooting:
The father of a Wisconsin school shooter must stand trial on charges he allowed her access to the guns she used in the deadly attack, a court commissioner ruled Thursday, rejecting arguments that he didn’t know she was considering violence and didn’t physically hand her the weapons at the school.
Dane County Court Commissioner John Rome issued the order in Jeffrey Rupnow’s case after a preliminary hearing, a routine step in the criminal justice process in which a court official decides whether enough evidence exists to order a trial.
Rupnow, 43, faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The charges carry a combined maximum sentence of 18 years in prison.
...Prosecutors charged Jeffery Rupnow in May, alleging in a criminal complaint that he told investigators his daughter was struggling to cope with her parents’ divorce and he bought her the guns as way to connect with her.
He also told investigators that he kept the guns in a safe but told her the code to unlock it, according to the complaint. The day before the school attack, the complaint says he took the Sig Sauer out of the safe so she could clean it, but he wasn’t sure if he put the weapon back in the safe or locked it.
The link regarding the complaint also contained this bit:
He kept [the daughter's] pistols in a gun safe, telling her that if she ever need them the access code was his Social Security number entered backward. About 10 days before the school attack, he texted a friend and said that Natalie would shoot him if he left “the fun safe open right now,” according to the complaint.
It seems the daughter took the guns from the safe to clean them the day before the shooting, but Rupnow failed to ensure they'd been returned.
Not that it would have mattered since she had the code.
In my opinion, Rupnow dropped the ball, but I don't know that it's to the degree that charges are warranted. I mean, that text is out of context. We don't know exactly what it was in reference to, after all. He could have been saying his daughter would be mad if the guns were placed in a situation where they could be easily stolen. I'm not saying it was, of course, only that we don't know.
If it was anything but a concern that the daughter — and I won't mention her name because I won't help make mass killers or attempted mass killers famous — was violent, I don't really see how you can saddle him with responsibility for what happened.
After all, there are a lot of kids in a lot of places who are trusted with access to firearms and eventually are forced to use them to defend their own lives. Many parents may well believe their child can, in fact, be trusted and might need to use them in the instance of an unfortunate occasion. Unless there's a reason for them to know otherwise, I'll never be comfortable with them being charged for assuming wrongly.
Others might disagree.
However, I can't escape feeling like this is just a way for some to try and discourage people from even owning a firearm in the first place.