The Crumbley family verdicts flow from America’s failed gun laws

Last week, James Crumbley, like his wife weeks before him, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to prevent their son Ethan from murdering four students with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun in 2021 at his Michigan high school. Given the evidence of the parents’ reckless neglect, many have applauded the juries’ decision to hold the elder Crumbleys accountable for the egregious acts of their troubled son. Yet the convictions also stand as a stark condemnation of lawmakers’ failure to enact the kind of commonsense gun safety laws that might have actually prevented the deaths.

In the wake of the tragedy, a new secure storage law, Public Act of 2023, went into effect last month in Michigan. It mandates that unattended weapons be kept unloaded and stored with a locking device if it is “reasonably known” that a minor could be on the premises. If that law had been in place in 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley might never have attempted the shootings, because his parents — despite their shortcomings — may have complied with state law. Instead, they were found criminally liable for not imposing in their own home the very restrictions on gun access that Michigan lawmakers had neglected to enact.

The statistics here are startling. Gun violence is now the leading cause of the death of children in the United States, with an estimated 4.6 million kids living in homes containing unsecured firearms. Seventy six percent of school shootings are committed with guns obtained from the home; 80 percent of children who die by suicide used a gun belonging to a family member; and 76 percent of accidental shootings of children occur with an unsecured gun located in a home, often from a nightstand.

Meanwhile, only 26 states have laws requiring secure storage of guns in homes with children — sometimes called “Child Access Prevention” or “CAP” laws. The states with CAP laws see 85 percent fewer unintentional injuries caused by firearms than states without them.

All 50 states have laws banning minors below a certain age from driving a car, and require training, testing and licensing before allowing anyone to drive. The theory is that cars are dangerous machines that can cause severe injury and death, and that reasonable requirements are needed to protect people from allowing unlicensed juveniles to drive automobiles. Similarly, there are laws banning minors from smoking and drinking alcohol, and as of June of last year 19 states had controversial laws banning parents from obtaining gender-affirming care for their children.

In other words, society does not impose on parents the unfettered obligation to ensure that their children do not engage in behaviors that voters consider worrisome or dangerous. Instead, criminal and civil laws function to mitigate against certain risks by disincentivizing parents from exposing kids to certain potential harms in the first place. A Gallup poll from October 2023 likewise shows that a majority of Americans (56 percent) believe that laws governing the sale of firearms should be stricter.

In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which specifically bars civil lawsuits against manufacturers, distributors and dealers of firearms. Unlike virtually any other industry that produces items that could harm consumers, gun manufacturers cannot be sued for failing to make their dangerous products safer. Reasonable gun control has thus been left in the hands of legislatures.

Because lawmakers have failed to act in nearly half of the states, the Crumbley verdicts now point the responsibility — and blame — on individual parents, who could face prison time if they don’t do at home what legislatures won’t do at large.

Meanwhile, 64 percent of those polled by Gallup believe that owning a gun in the house makes it a safer place to be. That’s wrong. A 2022 study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine found that people with handguns in the home are more than 50 percent more likely to be shot to death than people who live in gun-free homes. “We found zero evidence of any kind of protective effects” from living in a home with a handgun, said Stanford University researcher David Studdert, the study’s lead author.

Two juries in Michigan apparently agreed that handguns must be locked away from kids. The failure of Ethan Crumbley’s parents to keep the handgun away from him made them criminally responsible for the shooting deaths — even though they were not at the school when they occurred. Bear in mind that, prior to these high-profile cases, parental involvement in teen mass-murders has mostly been charged, if at all, as parental neglect or child abuse.

The difference with the Crumbley cases is that the parents were convicted under the state’s generic manslaughter law for personally causing the deaths. Involuntary manslaughter more typically arises, for example, when someone texts while driving, accidentally discharges a gun during a domestic argument or fails to control a dog with a history of attacking people. In all of these circumstances, the person who is charged actually caused the death, albeit inadvertently.

With the Crumbley verdicts, the chain of causation is more attenuated. They didn’t pay attention enough to their son’s cries for psychological help or take steps to keep a dangerous machine away from him.

Moving forward, parents who keep guns in the home had best beware. Barring that, they should consider banding together to vote for legislators willing to pass sensible gun storage laws that protect children — and themselves — from the terrible fates that befell the Crumbley family and its victims.

Kimberly Wehle is a professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law and author of “How to Read the Constitution — and Why.” Her forthcoming book, “Pardon Power: How the Pardon System Works – and Why,” is out in September. Follow her @kimwehle.