Evaluating a parent’s role in shootings

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s Thursday the 12th of September.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Mary Reichard.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: And I’m Myrna Brown.

Up next, responsibility for a school shooting.

Last week, Georgia law enforcement charged 14-year-old Colt Gray with allegedly killing four students at Apalachee High School in Georgia using a rifle his father Colin bought for him. Authorities arrested him and his father the next day.

REICHARD: This is the second time a court has held a parent liable for his or her child’s mass shooting. Earlier this year, a jury convicted Jennifer and James Crumbley of involuntary manslaughter and gave them ten years in prison after their son shot and killed four people at a Michigan high school.

BROWN: Does prosecuting parents for the acts of their children do much to help? Could laws have prevented these mass shootings?

WORLD Radio’s Mary Muncy reports.

SOUND: [COURT ROOM]

MARY MUNCY: The Georgia shooter’s father, Colin Gray, appeared in court last week rocking back and forth in his chair as he answered the judge's questions.

FOX, COLIN GRAY HEARING, JUDGE: How far did you go in school?

COLIN GRAY: Eleventh grade, GED.

The judge informed Gray of his rights and then read him the charges.

FOX, COLIN GRAY HEARING: You’re currently charged with two counts of felony murder in the second degree. You’re charged with four counts of felony involuntary manslaughter. You’re charged with eight counts of felony cruelty to children.

The maximum penalty for all of the charges combined is 180 years in prison. Gray has not yet entered a plea.

Prosecutors say Gray should have known better than to buy his son a gun because of a police visit last year.

AP, BODY CAM FOOTAGE OFFICER: Are you Colin?

GRAY: I am.

OFFICER: You want to step out where we can talk real quick?

In May of 2023, the FBI sent a tip to the Jackson County Sheriff's office. They said someone at Gray’s previous address made a school shooting threat on Discord, a messaging platform popular with gamers and other online interest groups.

That’s why officers showed up on Gray’s front porch. The sheriff's office released body cam footage of their visit this week.

OFFICER: Do you have weapons in the house?

GRAY: I do.

In the video, Gray says his son can access his guns but none of them are loaded.

GRAY: We do a lot of shooting. We do a lot of dear hunting. He shot his first dear this year. He knows the seriousness of weapons and what they can do and to use them and not use them.

The officers ask Gray about the threats on Discord.

GRAY: I don’t know anything about him saying — like that and I’m going to be mad as — if he did. And then all the guns will go away and they won’t be accessible to him.

He says they’ve talked about school shootings and that his son is getting picked on at school. Then he brings his son out to the porch.

OFFICER: Do you use Discord?

COLT GRAY: Discord?

OFFICER: Yes sir.

COLT GRAY: I used to, I don’t have it anymore.

The high schooler says he hasn’t used it in a few months and that he would never threaten to shoot up a school.

OFFICER: He’s telling me he didn’t. Telling me he can’t remember anything like that. And I take you at your word, okay? You look me in the eye and you tell me, that’s what you’re telling me, I got no choice but to take you at your word right now, okay?

COLT GRAY: Yes sir.

Officials couldn’t prove Gray’s son posted the threatening message, so all they could do was keep an eye out.

In another state, this may have been enough for officers to pursue an Extreme Risk Protection Order, or ERPO. These are also known as Red Flag laws… And they allow officials to confiscate someone’s guns for a short time if they might be a threat to themself or others.

Amy Swearer with the Heritage Foundation says the laws are meant to address people who aren’t at a point where they should be locked up… but they might still be dangerous.

AMY SWEARER: It's giving people who are seeing someone in their lives that is becoming a danger to themselves or others, but who haven't yet reached that legal threshold, giving them some sort of intermediate option to actually intervene.

So far, about half of U.S. states have them. Swearer says it’s hard to quantify whether the laws have prevented mass shootings since they’re so rare, but there are individual examples. There is also research showing that they’ve prevented suicides.

Since last week, the shooter’s family has spoken to the media about what they say was a stressful home life.

His grandfather told CNN that he lived in a hostile environment with his father.

Public records show his mother was arrested last year for theft, drugs, and trafficking. In Facebook posts that have since been deleted, she said her husband abused her and her Facebook profile says they’re separated.

Swearer says it’s hard to tell whether any of these things could have been cause for police to issue an ERPO… or whether the family would have brought one themselves. But that may not have mattered anyway.

SWEARER: This investigation happened in May of 2023 which is well over a year ago, at this point – almost going on a year and a half. Most red flag laws expire. I mean, of course they can be renewed, but the initial ones expire after six months, or after a year.

Then seven months after police visited the Grays, Colin bought his son an AR-15-style rifle for Christmas. That was the gun he used in the shooting.

Swearer doesn’t know whether a Red Flag law would have stopped Gray from buying it since it’s unclear how an ERPO could apply to a family member’s firearms.

SWEARER: That doesn't strike me as the type of parent necessarily, who is not going to do the same thing, regardless of a Red Flag law.

But is that behavior irresponsible enough that the father should share in his son’s blame?

JODY MADEIRA: It was illegal for Colin to purchase this for Colt in the first place.

Jody Madeira is a professor at Indiana University Maurer School of Law. Federal law prohibits a minor from buying a rifle, and Georgia state law follows that. The state doesn’t prohibit a minor from owning a rifle, but people can be charged with criminally reckless behavior that leads to involuntary manslaughter which could include giving a dangerous person or a minor a gun.

MADEIRA: If the law provides criminal charges that could be brought and prosecutors don't charge them, that's another problem.

Madeira says it’s like someone buying a gun for a felon. They’re typically not allowed to own firearms so if the felon commits a crime with the gun, the person who bought it isn’t an accomplice, but they are liable.

She says it’s similar to the Michigan shooter’s parents too.

MADEIRA: This basically recognizes that the parents did something that was criminally negligent. You know, they both engaged in criminally reckless behavior that made them, in part, culpable for these shootings, because, arguably, without that firearm, these children would not have committed the shootings that they did.

While charging a parent has historically been outside of the usual bounds, Madeira thinks that more states are going to start considering it.

MADEIRA: The question is going to be, was there any basis where parents could have known that their child had a mental health condition, and if so, did they do something that we would regard as reckless or even, you know, criminally negligent, like get them a firearm.

Right now, Colt Gray is being held without bond and his father didn’t request one. Colt is being tried as an adult, with the maximum penalty of life in prison. Their preliminary hearings are scheduled for December.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Mary Muncy.

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