Columnist Bill Newman: Can’t we protect our kids?
Published: 09-13-2024 1:21 PM |
Last week 14-year-old Colt Gray shot and killed two classmates and two teachers at his Apalachee High School in Winder, Georgia. Colt has been charged with four counts of felony murder and will be tried as an adult.
His father, Colin Gray, has been charged with two counts of second-degree murder and numerous counts of involuntary manslaughter and cruelty to children. The basis for those charges? The father had, according to prosecutors, given Colt that AR 15-style weapon as a Christmas present, knowing that his son posed a danger to himself and others.
Tragedy abounds here. So do ironies.
Trying the 14-year-old as an adult assumes that the kid is mature enough to bear full responsibility for the murders he allegedly committed. At the same time the state is claiming that actually — wait a minute — the father should be held criminally responsible for his son’s actions.
Foolish consistency, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, may be the hobgoblin of little minds, but some consistency when the government is making life and death decisions is more than warranted.
Back to the father’s culpability. The guns should have been securely locked away, right? Answer: logically, yes. But legally no, not in Georgia. No law requires that.
In addition, months earlier a deputy sheriff had come to investigate an alleged online threat implicating Colt. The father, according to the police report, confirmed Colt’s access to guns, reported that they were used for hunting, and later in that police interview said that if his son had made any threats, “I’m going to be mad as hell, and then all the guns will go away.” Law enforcement took no action and brought no charges.
Also, the father was not out of step with his community. In many parts of the country, possession of assault-style rifles is common and flat-out legal.
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But shouldn’t the father have known that his son posed a danger? Maybe. But maybe the father thought his son would be OK, turned a blind eye, gave him the benefit of the doubt. We don’t know yet.
We do know that Colt’s parents were separated, money was tight, and in 2022 the Grays had been evicted from their home. Colt probably had been bullied in school. His mother, Marcee Gray, pleaded guilty in December to a charge of family violence, and there have been suspicions about her using fentanyl and methamphetamines. That said, Marcee Gray almost became the hero of this story. Almost.
On the day of the shootings, fearing an “impending disaster,” she telephoned an Apalachee High School counselor to warn about an “extreme emergency” involving her son, pleading for the school to immediately find him. She made that call at 9:50 a.m. The school did not act quickly enough. A half-hour later Colt opened fire.
Many people are applauding the prosecution of this father and his son. Perhaps there is some catharsis in that. Perhaps the prosecution is starting out with maximum severity. After all, the potential for life (and death) in prison gives prosecutors a lot of leverage in plea discussions.
But a maximal prosecution-focus, especially for the son, is misplaced. He committed horrifying and horrendous killings. He was also in an untreated mental health crisis. And he’s 14 years old. Fourteen.
Lock him up for the rest of his life because that somehow will deter some other homicidal, suicidal kid? As for the father, we don’t know enough yet to make a judgment.
But we know more than enough to make a judgment about the responsibility of other adults, the lawmakers in that state.
Georgia has some of the laxest gun safety laws in the country. The state has no background check requirements, no restrictions on possessing semiautomatic assault rifles and large capacity magazines, and no red flag laws. And so on. (Massachusetts, by contrast, with some of the most rigorous gun safety laws in the country, has the second-lowest death by firearm rate after Rhode Island.)
Gun violence poses a national health emergency. But take heart — we have addressed other health emergencies. For example, cigarette smoking, which used to be completely acceptable, has been reduced by over 70%. Similarly, between 1991 and 2021, drunken driving fatalities for drivers under 21 decreased by, again, 70%.
Yes, many men and some women dearly love their guns, even more than cigarettes and alcohol. But they also love their kids and grandkids.
And yes, the Supreme Court is in the pocket of the MAGA movement and the NRA. And yes, the political opposition to gun safety laws is powerful.
But more powerful is the realization that Apalachee High School students Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo and teachers Cristina Irimie and Richard Aspinwall did not have to die. Neither did the victims at Columbine High in 1999, Sandy Hook Elementary in 2012, Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018, and dozens of others.
The haunting question that remains: How many more schools will be added to this list?
Bill Newman, a Northampton-based lawyer and co-host of Talk the Talk on WHMP, writes a monthly column.