Are school shootings the price we have to pay for the second amendment?

[Jersey Girl]

I had a delay due to in real life. I'm working on it and may or may not be ready to post tonight or tomorrow. Trying not to write a chapter book here.

No worries, I am sure it will be well worth the wait!

I doubt it!

[Res Ipsa]

And the toll isn’t just in dead and wounded kids. Here’s a text I just received from Ms. Ipsa, who teaches at the local middle school:



They did their periodic ALICE drill Friday, so everyone should be up to speed if the worst happened.

The students and teachers from Oxford High School are dealing with trauma right this very second and likely aren't getting the type of immediate treatment that they need. They're going to need mental health services for a very long time.

Yeah. The ripple effect is huge.

[Jersey Girl]

No worries, I am sure it will be well worth the wait!

I doubt it!

First installment is posted in a new topic thread in this forum. Good luck wading through it! I'll try to get the next installment up on the same thread tomorrow. I don't think it will be more than two parts but who knows?

You can find it here:
viewtopic.php?f=13&t=154434

ETA: It's going to be more than two parts. I'm sure of it.

[Father Francis]

And the toll isn’t just in dead and wounded kids. Here’s a text I just received from Ms. Ipsa, who teaches at the local middle school:

They did their periodic ALICE drill Friday, so everyone should be up to speed if the worst happened.

The students and teachers from Oxford High School are dealing with trauma right this very second and likely aren't getting the type of immediate treatment that they need. They're going to need mental health services for a very long time.

Even if they get short term help it is unlikely (unless their parents are filthy rich) that they will get the kind of treatment needed to handle the long term damage. Despite the focus and lessening of the stigma around mental health here in the US, access is abysmal. Costs are high too as the insurance companies don't want to pay for mental health. I think it's time we stop separating body from "mind" (most neurologists would agree on this) and decide that mental health and physical health are the same.

[Jersey Girl]

Oh boy. Criminal defense attorney Scott Reisch has an entirely different take on whether or not Ethan Crumbley's parents should be charged in this case. I have to admit that he's probably right. I've time stamped this at where he cites and addresses the law in this case.

Michigan School M@ss@cr3: Should the Parents be Charged?
https://youtu.be/hgPGvI9ijNg?t=905

[canpakes]

Oh boy. Criminal defense attorney Scott Reisch has an entirely different take on whether or not Ethan Crumbley's parents should be charged in this case. I have to admit that he's probably right. I've time stamped this at where he cites and addresses the law in this case.

Michigan School M@ss@cr3: Should the Parents be Charged?
https://youtu.be/hgPGvI9ijNg?t=905

The law is clear enough, but I find Reisch’s comments that there could not have been any imminent danger interpreted by anyone to have existed - based on the fact that the school didn’t call the police - to be flippant and strange. Were school officials aware that Ethan had just been gifted a firearm, or may have had access to one?

Certainly, his parents knew, so I can’t see that the school’s failure to call the police is a ‘get out of jail free’ card for the parents, who were aware enough of the possibility that their son could present a danger, given Ethan’s father’s first action of searching for his firearm after hearing about a shooting incident, and Ethan’s mother texting him “… don’t do it”, when she heard about the story while the shooter was still unidentified.

Still, I’d put money on the chance that a jury will not convict the parents, regardless of whatever they did to contribute to this situation.

[Res Ipsa]

Oh boy. Criminal defense attorney Scott Reisch has an entirely different take on whether or not Ethan Crumbley's parents should be charged in this case. I have to admit that he's probably right. I've time stamped this at where he cites and addresses the law in this case.

Michigan School M@ss@cr3: Should the Parents be Charged?
https://youtu.be/hgPGvI9ijNg?t=905

The show host quoted the right parts of the pattern jury instructions, but I thought his application to the facts was superficial and lazy. The parents knew they had purchased a gun for the kid, they knew he had access to it, they’d seen a drawing he’d made with a gun and indications here was having thoughts of killing and the words “help me.” The school told them to take him home and get psychiatric help before bringing him back. They refused. That scenario fits well within the definition of gross negligence.

Did the parents tell the school personnel that the kid has access to a handgun? Did they warn the school that it was possible he had the gun in his backpack? If not, only the parents had the information that would lead a reasonable person to understand that the kid posed an immediate and deadly threat.

The school had no reason to call the police. The kid hadn’t broken any laws that the school was aware of. He hadn’t assaulted anyone or taken any violent action.

To say the parents couldn’t have committed involuntary manslaughter because the school didn’t call the police is a terrible argument when the parents knew the facts that made the situation dangerous but didn’t tell the school.

Now, the facts could change with new evidence. But if the parents had told the school they had recently bought the kid a semi-automatic handgun that he has access to, does anyone really believe that the school officials wouldn’t have searched his backpack (and locker if he had one)?

[Jersey Girl]

Oh boy. Criminal defense attorney Scott Reisch has an entirely different take on whether or not Ethan Crumbley's parents should be charged in this case. I have to admit that he's probably right. I've time stamped this at where he cites and addresses the law in this case.

Michigan School M@ss@cr3: Should the Parents be Charged?
https://youtu.be/hgPGvI9ijNg?t=905

The show host quoted the right parts of the pattern jury instructions, but I thought his application to the facts was superficial and lazy. The parents knew they had purchased a gun for the kid, they knew he had access to it, they’d seen a drawing he’d made with a gun and indications here was having thoughts of killing and the words “help me.” The school told them to take him home and get psychiatric help before bringing him back. They refused. That scenario fits well within the definition of gross negligence.

Did the parents tell the school personnel that the kid has access to a handgun? Did they warn the school that it was possible he had the gun in his backpack? If not, only the parents had the information that would lead a reasonable person to understand that the kid posed an immediate and deadly threat.

The school had no reason to call the police. The kid hadn’t broken any laws that the school was aware of. He hadn’t assaulted anyone or taken any violent action.

To say the parents couldn’t have committed involuntary manslaughter because the school didn’t call the police is a terrible argument when the parents knew the facts that made the situation dangerous but didn’t tell the school.

Now, the facts could change with new evidence. But if the parents had told the school they had recently bought the kid a semi-automatic handgun that he has access to, does anyone really believe that the school officials wouldn’t have searched his backpack (and locker if he had one)?

You make the better case.

I have a question. Does the school have the right to search student backpacks and lockers? I'm thinking that no lockers are being used these days but I could be wrong about that. Does your resident expert have information about locker usage in schools in your area?

[Res Ipsa]

Neither the local middle school nor the high school uses lockers anymore.

[Res Ipsa]

I should add that the legal situation the school was facing when the parents refused to take the kid out of school was likely more complicated than most news articles reflect. Because it was a public school, the teachers and administrators were state actors. And, because Justice Thomas hasn't managed to persuade the rest of the Court that students have no constitutional rights, they have a subset of federal constitutional rights and may also have rights under federal education laws, state constitutions, and state education laws.

Ms. Ipsa has told me that she cannot simply remove a disruptive student from the classroom because the student has a right to be educated. Education law has gotten much more complicated than it was back when I took a course in it in the '80s. I don't know where that rule at her school comes from, but I suspect it's from a policy that attempts to implement students' rights that are provided in some statute or constitutional provision.

What I think this means is that having the school essentially detain the kid rather than send him to class may have been a violation of the kid's rights. Sending him away from the school unsupervised sounds like a bad choice, as the note should have raised concerns about suicide. There may have been no good choices that the school could have made.