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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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The case is that their son was foreseeably going to hurt somebody or at least be highly irresponsible with guns. And I think that’s been proved well enough at least for the probably existing statute on liability for storing firearms within the access of a minor to kick in.

If Ethan Crumbley had run over 4 people with the family car, would the parents have been prosecuted for leaving the keys on the counter?

Maybe. We don't have that counterfactual available to us, but I don't think it would be crazy to say that parents bare some degree of responsibility for providing their homicidally deranged child easy access to effective murder weapons, whether those are vehicles or firearms. I would hope for proportional approaches to the degree of ease, efficacy, and likely use as a weapon for a given implement. Firearms are probably the single most effective tool readily available for targeted violence. Cars are actually pretty high on the list as well and I think it's generally very bad that we treat vehicular fatalities with less seriousness than other negligent homicides. When we get down to something like knives, there is no plausible path to parents preventing their homicidally deranged child from acquiring a kitchen knife, but it's also unlikely that they'll succeed in killing four people on a rampage with said knife.

I would also want proportion to the amount of non-violent usefulness for the item, and the amount of necessity for the item in society. No one needs a firearm to get along in society. Yes, it may have usefulness in a law-abiding way, but even the closest thing to a necessity for firearms in society in self-defense -- which involves, inherently, violence. It may be justified violence, but it is violence. Someone who shoots a carjacker is doing the same thing an armed carjacker-gone-wrong does -- using a firearm against a person. And there is no necessity in the 21st century to hunt for food, and certainly no necessity to hunt or shoot for sport.

A car, however -- using a car to run someone over is incorrectly using a car. No one for a lawful or legitimate purpose runs over a person with a car. There is no sense in which a car is supposed to be used to run someone over. There are no sports in which people get run over by cars. There is no such thing as driving through a crash test barrier made of clay for sport. A car, used properly, is not a weapon, it's a means of transport. Firearms are weapons.

And you also kind of need a car to get along in society -- especially in places where public transportation does not exist or is woefully inadequate. It makes a lot more sense to give your depressed teen (with a drivers' license, of course!) access to the family car than to give them a gun. After all, if they can't use the car to go visit their friends, or go to their after-school job, what they'll be doing is moping around the house. And that just sounds like more depression.

Perhaps he could have used the gun at a firing range to let off some stress. But if I were the parents, and actually paid attention to the kid, I wouldn't let him do that without supervision. And I wouldn't even do that, personally. The parents made an active choice to put a weapon in the hands of their depressed, angry son, unsupervised. That's not bad parenting, that's ludicriously harmful parenting. I would even say negligent.

All that being said, it's interesting to me that owning a firearm is a right, but driving a car is a privilege -- yet the former is optional and the latter, for many people, a necessity.