Fa La La La La-La-Bang Bang Bang

So, what kind of parents are James and Jennifer Crumbley? Well, they’re the kind of parents who give their 15-year-old son, Ethan, a Sig Sauer nine-millimeter pistol. And other parents debate when it’s time to give their kids cell phones.

The Crumbleys are the kind of parents who don’t tell school officials about their kid’s gun after they’re called in to talk about their son’s drawings of murdering people.

They might be the kind of parents who don’t tell school officials at the meeting over drawings of corpses, “Hey, there’s a semi-automatic pistol currently in his backpack.”

They’re the kind of parents who go on the run after their son is arrested as the only suspect in a school shooting that killed four people. I’m sure if they got away, they’d send Ethan a birthday card to his jail cell every year.

They’re the kind of parents who claim they were going to turn themselves in after cleaning out their ATM and hiding in a friend’s Detroit warehouse for about 24 hours after missing an arraignment. Both parents are charged on multiple counts of involuntary manslaughter for not securing the gun.

They’re the kind of parents who hire defense lawyers for themselves but let their son settle for the free court-appointed lawyer.

The shooting at Oxford High School in Michigan is the deadliest at a US K-12 campus since 2018 and the 32nd such attack since August 1. The parents purchased Ethan’s gun four days before the shooting on Black Friday. Jennifer referred to it as his Christmas present. Nothing celebrates the birth of Jesus as much as an assault weapon.

There were rumors before the shooting there would be a school shooting on that day. The students knew it but apparently, the school, police, and Ethan’s parents did not…supposedly.

Ethan did not legally own his gun. Kyle Rittenhouse didn’t legally own his gun either. I’m sure the little girl in Congressman Thomas Massie’s gun fetish Christmas photo doesn’t own her gun either.

The congressman tweeted out a photo four days after the shooting where he, his wife, and their five kids, are posing in front of a Christmas tree, each holding an assault weapon. The accompanying message is, “Santa, please bring ammo.” Let’s hope for the moment that the congressman’s guns are as empty as his head.

Other than being tasteless, the congressman is encouraging more parents to give their children assault weapons.

When I was a kid, I had a gun. My gun was a 4-10 shotgun. Growing up in Louisiana and Georgia, a lot of my friends had guns. I don’t recall anyone having something other than a 4-10, 12 gauge, or a 22 rifle (When I was old enough, I a 22 rifle from K-mart, and a 12 gauge from my uncle, but he later repossessed it because I wasn’t making payments on it. I pawned the 22 after I got married and it hasn’t been fired in years). But nobody had a gun just to have a gun. Everyone hunted with their guns. It wasn’t as much of a gun culture as it was a hunting culture. It was one I didn’t really fit into and my 4-10 rusted in a closet (I was more of a city kid). But a friend of mine was shot with his 4-10. If I’m recalling the story correctly, he was shot in his bedroom while he and another friend were goofing off with it and he forgot it was loaded. He survived because it was a 4-10. Those guns are typically used for rabbits, squirrels, birds, and ex-boyfriends in the ass. He was hit in the arm and he often showed the scars off. Yes, scars. The pellets made several holes in his arm. I didn’t know him until about a year after the shooting, but I had heard about it. When I found out he was the kid in the news and in all the school rumors, I said, “That was you?” I was glad he survived. We used to shoot BB guns at each other behind the levy along the shore of the Ouachita River, which was a terrible hobby (the rule was you could only pump your gun once, but you’d hear the “clack clack clack” of a BB gun being pumped several times behind a tree during these gunfights that everyone in the neighborhood would play in). Surprisingly, nobody lost an eye.

So maybe it’s a horrible idea to give any kid a gun, any kind of gun. When I was in high school in the deep south, there were shotguns and rifles visibly displayed in the gun racks of students’ pickup trucks. Guns on school property weren’t banned. But then again, this was the 1980s and my high school had a smoking section too. I knew guys who would go hunting before school and show up in bloody orange and camoflauge hunting clothes. It was really hard to focus on a math quiz while sitting next to someone who smelled like a deer carcass.

Guns are a bad idea for kids. And in a lot of cases, they’re a bad idea for adults. There are so many guns on the open market that nobody needs to own.

There have been 407 mass shootings in the United States in 2021 that have killed 482 people. There are 2,409 victims of mass shootings this year. Of those 407 mass shootings, 222 have been school shootings. And most of those school shootings were with guns the shooters didn’t own. So, maybe we should stop promoting gun fetishes with children on fucking Christmas cards.

This is more than a crisis of bad parenting, but don’t make any mistakes about it…the Crumbleys are bad parents. And if you buy your underage kid a gun, so are you.

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