There's bad parenting, and then there's whatever James and Jennifer Crumbley were doing while raising Ethan Crumbley, the 15-year-old suspect in the Oxford High School shooting.
Unless he changes his not guilty plea to guilty, Ethan will stand trial as an adult for allegedly murdering four of his classmates at school last week in what is believed to be a random attack. We don't know his motives because his parents ordered him not to talk to the cops before they themselves became subjects of a statewide manhunt.
What was on Ethan Crumbley's mind when he emerged from a school bathroom, shooting whomever happened to be in his line of fire?
For now, Ethan has offered the authorities and the public nothing more than his smirky, sullen mugshot to ponder. Without access to his social media accounts, he's chosen to be an enigma.
His parents told him to shut up. Though Ethan was in police custody minutes after the shooting began, the upside to incarceration is that he is still alive. The gun his father bought on Black Friday — the same gun that Ethan showed off on social media — was unceremoniously taken from him by first-responder cops who might have killed him if he hadn't resembled so many kids they knew and loved.
Ethan knows he won't see his gun again until a picture of it is blown up and presented as evidence to the jury during his murder trial. Perhaps the gun itself will make an appearance in a plastic bag dangled from the prosecutor's hand to preserve evidence.
Oh, how he loved that gun.
For James and Jennifer Crumbley, a similar journey through the belly of the criminal justice system now looms. They were both arraigned on four charges of involuntary manslaughter — each charge representing a life snatched away in that school corridor by their son.
Like Ethan, they pleaded not guilty to the charges. I'm sure they don't think they are responsible for what happened at Oxford High School — and neither is their son, who shares their adoration for the Second Amendment.
Before even advancing a counternarrative about what happened at the school, the Crumbleys have pushed back on the widely disseminated story that they were on the lam.
While it is true that they didn't turn themselves in for the arraignment when expected, they insist they were not fugitives, despite an extensive manhunt to find them. They weren't running away when they turned up in an artist's studio in Detroit. They were just taking the long way to the Oakland County, Mich., jail where their son is being held.
Besides, what's wrong with taking a little extra time to gather exculpatory evidence when the stakes are so high?
So now James, Jennifer and Ethan Crumbley are being held in the same jail, albeit in separate cells. According to authorities, there's no reason that they would've told the suspected killer that his parents have been taken into custody and could be occupying cells just down the corridor from him. That's the sort of information homicide detectives hold on to for special occasions.
Ethan is probably wondering why he hasn't heard from his mom and dad since last week. I can't help but wonder if he's actually depending on them to help him — or does he realize their neglect extends far beyond the absurd decision to pick out a gun for him and ignore his school's warnings about his behavior? This particular massacre has many authors — and many parents.
Ethan Crumbley is too young to have any concept of how many decades he's facing behind bars if found guilty. A single life sentence would be the minimum he could expect, but it would be incomprehensible to someone who isn't legally an adult. Is the brain of a 15-year-old killer sufficiently developed enough to understand what a school shooting rampage means?
Most 15-year-olds know that what Ethan Crumbley is accused of doing is wrong. Still, one wonders if there are mitigating circumstances when the child who does something so horrendous can claim that being born into a family of amoral narcissists has stripped him of the ability to see each potential victim of his rampage as a person deserving of life.
It's easy to point fingers at the accused killer and his morally negligent parents because they truly bear most of the weight for what happened at Oxford High School in Oakland County, Mich., last week.
School authorities did everything they thought they were supposed to do when they correctly suspected that Ethan was disturbed enough to carry out a shooting rampage. Yes, they should've inspected his book bag and his locker when he entered the building, but like all school authorities these days, they're more intimidated by parents and the fear of legal action than they should be. Had they done so under the auspices of school security, a massacre could've been avoided.
But the folks who most deserve to be in the same cell block as Ethan Crumbley and his parents include the politicians who are working to roll back even the modest and ineffectual gun laws that we currently have. They bear more responsibility for this than the gun manufacturers themselves.
Every time there's a mass shooting at a school or workplace, those who are most complicit in flooding the streets with guns point to the Second Amendment as their answer to the mayhem.
Most Americans don't want to imagine an America where gun rights aren't woven into fabric of everyday life. If several massacres a week is the price to pay for access to the freedom to bear arms, then let freedom — and bullets — reign.
Ethan Crumbley and his parents may be unusual in the extent of their depraved indifference to the lives of others, but their brand of social psychosis is all too familiar. We recognize their selfishness for what it is, and we're repelled and horrified by it.
But we're not repulsed enough to do anything about it. That would require an act of civic empathy we're just not capable of at this time.
That, in a nutshell, is the sublime tragedy of being an American. It's impossible to muster the imagination to modify an amendment on an 18th-century document, even if it is literally killing us.
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