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ONCE MORE INTO the abyss, I’m afraid. In this space and elsewhere over the years, I have vented on numerous occasions about the abhorrent gun culture in the land of my birth.
Sadly, I usually do so in the wake of the rather commonplace mass shootings that tend to happen in schools and in other venues where the public should be safe.
This time, a 15-year-old boy – I find it incredibly difficult even to type those words – named Ethan Crumbley is charged with the killing of Madisyn Baldwin (17), Tate Myre (16), Hana St Juliana (14) and Justin Shilling (17), his fellow students at Oxford High School outside Detroit, in cold blood. The thoughts of four young people with their whole lives ahead of them being killed are numbing.
A very black day
This case bears the hallmarks of similar tragic events in the past, but prosecutors this time have moved a step further and are also focusing on Ethan’s parents. At a press conference to announce the charges against the parents, the county prosecutor for the area, Karen McDonald, gave details on how authorities believe the two failed to prevent the tragedy.
Ethan’s parents, James and Jennifer Crumbley have now been charged with involuntary manslaughter in connection with the killings, with prosecutors alleging they purchased the semiautomatic pistol believed to have been used in the killings for their son on Black Friday as a present. The mind boggles. Why, in the name of God, would anyone be so foolish?
We are also told by prosecutors there is more to it than this, and it is worse still. When her son was caught looking at ammunition online during school hours, Jennifer Crumbley, according to prosecutors, texted Ethan: “LOL, I’m not mad at you. You have to learn not to get caught!” Again, if this is established at trial, what would possess a parent to conduct herself like this?
There are further chilling aspects to this tale. McDonald, in her conference, said the day of the shooting, after a teacher saw Ethan drawing harrowing images of dead bodies with the caption “blood everywhere,” James and Jennifer Crumbley were summoned to the school.
Notwithstanding the appalling imagery he had conceived of and the fact that he could swiftly get his hands on a lethal weapon, prosecutors allege that Ethan’s parents refused to take him home. They believe this left Ethan at Oxford High where he allegedly carried out the dastardly deed shortly thereafter.
Ethan Crumbley currently faces 24 separate criminal counts as an adult, including first-degree murder and terrorism causing death. There will be investigations into whether the responses of guidance counsellors and Oxford officials were sufficient. All of this is far too little, far too late for the Baldwin, Myre, St Juliana and Shilling families, however.
Toxic gun culture
The thing is that, as much as most of us can agree that James and Jennifer Crumbley may well prove objectively to be terrible parents and their son Ethan to be a deeply troubled boy, I do not believe that they are at all exceptional in the US when it comes to their attitude to firearms.
There are millions of families who own high-powered guns and for whom this is a badge of honour. Some would assert that it is actually a patriotic manifestation of their pride in being Americans. “God, guns and guts made America; let’s keep all three” is a slogan articulated on t-shirts, baseball caps and bumper stickers.
They pass this on from generation to generation. As much as I find it profoundly disturbing, the reality is that lots of these families are made up of decent people who teach their offspring to respect guns and how to use and store them safely.
Hunting and target practice are favoured pastimes – and many, particularly in rural America, see guns as indispensable tools to preserving their way of life and to protecting their homes and loved ones.
This is the gun culture in the US looked at in the best possible light. I have never understood it and never will. To those who revere it, I say that’s fair enough. There are undeniable consequences of it, though. And I don’t know how this constituency of Americans can remain comfortable with all the human suffering that has flowed from easy accessibility to an arsenal of hardware designed to kill, and kill quickly.
I would guess that not many of the residents of an increasingly insular, inward-facing nation are aware, but the rest of the world doesn’t have frequent mass shootings. Because gun ownership is heavily regulated and appropriately limited, the potential for carnage is greatly diminished. James Crumbley would not have been able to buy a 9 millimetre Sig Sauer for his young boy and – it is worth repeating their names – Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St Juliana and Justin Shilling would be looking forward to the Christmas holidays with their loved ones right now.
The strength of the lobby
Advocates, activists and politicians who vociferously support a very liberal interpretation of the 2nd Amendment to the US Constitution won’t, yet they really should, absorb and reflect upon that truism. If they did, I frankly don’t see how they could live with themselves.
Congressman Thomas Massie, known lately as one of a small band in the US House of Representatives who refuses to wear a mask on the floor of the chamber to safeguard against the spread of Covid-19, fits squarely in this unfortunate category.
Mere days after what transpired in Michigan, the Kentucky Republican sent out a tweet with his wife and children brandishing terrifying looking weaponry and with an entreaty to St Nick: “Santa, please bring ammo.”
What kind of person sends a message like this, at a moment like this, and rubs salt in the wounds of those grieving the loss of teenage high school students? Congressman Massie holds two degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s finest universities. Stupidity can’t be utilised as an excuse.
At best, he is tone deaf. At worst, he is a thundering disgrace. And so long as women and men with views like his about guns occupy political office and can populate the statute books in the US with their warped delusions, I will feel a grave sense of shame and will despair for a country I will nonetheless always love with all of my heart.
Larry Donnelly is a Boston attorney, a Law Lecturer at NUI Galway and a political columnist with TheJournal.ie. His new book – “The Bostonian: Life in an Irish American Political Family” – is published by Gill Books and is available for purchase at all bookshops.
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Well said Larry – couldn’t agree more.
Personally, I’ll not set foot in the states due to the prevalence of armed people and of people who think that it’s perfectly OK to have armed people walking around the place.
Strange, strange outlook.
@Lee King Buckett: I’m sure 330 million Americans are devastated you won’t set foot in their country. How will the ever get over this tragedy
@Roy Dowling: A comment devastating in its wit I’m sure, but the gun lobby is a very vocal minority, with NRA membership standing at about 5 million. Lets even give them full benefit of the doubt and call that households rather than people and say 20 million. And so the numbers are there in the American population to overturn widespread private gun ownership – at the very least the private sale of battlefield weapons to private citizens. They just have to come together and want it badly enough. Or maybe they are happy enough to see gun attack drills become the norm for school going children right down to pre-school age, a true perversion if ever there was one. Either way, its hard to argue with Larry wanting to stay the hell out of Dodge for the foreseeable future.
@Roy Dowling: Are you offended on their behalf?
@Roy Dowling: Ah Roy, I can always rely on you to come up with a predictably low-brow and fairly unintelligent attempt at being humorous.
On the plus side for you, there are a few Covid articles down below that you can go full yellow vest on and even one on immigrants for you to drag your knuckles on.
@Eoin Roche: I’ll be honest I didn’t even read what Larry said. I’m not American so honestly couldn’t careless if 5 million Americans have guns of 330 million Americans have guns. It’s the land of the free home of the brave there country there laws. An Irish man not travelling to the US isn’t going to make a single bit of difference.
@Roy Dowling: Could be worse Lee. Could be like you and get offended and upset over every little thing. I mean seriously why does it concern you that a country thousands of miles away people have guns?. If it’s legal to buy guns then let them buy guns it had no impact on your life what so ever.
@Roy Dowling: For the same reason that it appears to upset you that I don’t want yo go there.
@Roy Dowling: Many of us, myself included, have friends or family living in the States. Some of them have kids that are in Middle School or High School. That’s why it concerns me anyway.
@Roy Dowling: Then whats the point of commenting? Larry is of Irish stock and lives here with his family, but he is from Massachusetts and I’d imagine the turmoil over guns in his home country is pretty disheartening to put it mildly.
@Lee King Buckett:
In a strange contrast, Kennesaw in Georgia requires each household to maintain a gun, it has pretty low violent crime numbers.
@Lee King Buckett: I’m about as upset about it as all the Americans who’ll never get to see you.
@Eoin Roche: Eoin, I will take from that comment ‘his own country’.
That’s fine, let him go to his own country and whing and pontificate to his hearts content on any media outlet that gifts him the space. I for one have neither care nor interest to listen to him deliver it in Ireland.
Let him go home and get stuck in the fight to turn things around to a place he feels happier to raise his family in.
At this stage he’s becoming nearly like a perverse replica of Noraid.
Unfortunately America or the USA to be precise is a country where vast numbers of people live under grand delusions. They have washed the reality of their history , the ethnic cleansing, the massive land grabs , the economic boom driven by first slavery and then exploitation of minorities. All these truths are not up for discussion so why should the myth of “How the west was won” and the gun culture that exists to this day be an exception.
@Liam Tighe: Nail on the head Liam. The US doesn’t suffer from a toxic gun culture. It suffers from a fundamentally flawed violence fetishism.
Gun culture is what you see on shooting ranges in Ireland and elsewhere in Europe. It’s people bringing out their sports equipment to shoot clays, pistol and rifle targets and where some lads meet up on a frosty winters morning to go out in pursuit of pheasants, duck or deer.
@Steven Moens: I am one of the people who shoot clay-pigeons and occasionally go out to shoot pheasants, partridge or grouse. I am not any part of a ‘gun culture’. The photo accompanying this article is as abhorrent to me as it is to you. Yes, I like being a good shot on clays as it is a skill like playing golf well. I also want to be a good shot when I am shooting game as I want to achieve a clean kill. But my guns are locked away in a safe when not in use and have no political significance.
It’s a sick society.
A gun culture is one of the worst ingredients you could have in the make up of your country. And this coming from a citizen of a country with a severe alcohol culture.
I went to a shooting range once where I was so inept at holding the gun properly, the trainer had to come over and show me twice. Definitely not a natural so. I fired a semi automatic pistol and hit the target with 3 of my 6 shots. That was genuinely scary to me, that someone like me could potentially do that much damage. I love visiting the States but I couldn’t live there.
Larry trying to give the impression of writing an impartial piece on American culture, but towards the end he is unable to hide his bias as once again he attacks the Republican Party.
@Raymond Barry: does calling something ‘abhorrent’ give you the impression that an impartial assessment of it is to follow? I assume you mean the criticism of Thomas Massie. He at no stage mentions his party affliation, although for the sake of balance he could have mentioned some democrats and their families that were pictured grinning like psychopaths with automatic weapons. Oh wait..
Yes no USA home defence kit is complete without a trusty M60 7.62 LMG.
It isn’t that long ago since guns in Ireland didn’t have to be stored securely. I remember finding the shotguns my dad used pheasant hunting when I was searching the house for where my parents might have hidden Xmas presents. Thankfully I’d enough sense not to even consider taking them out to “play” with them. My younger brother lost a classmate to suicide by gun a few years later. Farmers are still entitled to have guns to protect their livestock/property here but it’s nearly always a shotgun that they have as anything else is so tightly restricted. Considering our war of independence & civil war were so much more recent than the USA you’d think we’d be far more keen on keeping guns handy in case of invasion/civil war than they are since that is the justification for their 2nd amendment.
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