Parents' Rights and School Shootings

According to Progressive Democrats of America,  "last week’s deadly shooting at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit was one of 222 school shooting incidents in 2021, an all-time high, according to the Center for Homeland Defense and Security’s K-12 School Shooting Database." The difference in this shooting versus many others is that the parents of the alleged shooter are being held jointly in connection with the murders of four students and seven injured. Maybe, it is as it should be. With school boards being loaded by parent activists who want more say over what their children learn and experience in school, perhaps it is time we also hold less active parents accountable for what their children do in America's schools.

 It may have escaped the notice of some liberals, but conservative right-wingers are using authoritarian messaging that sounds ever so wholesome but is really part of a power grab at all levels. Concerned parents who don't want to vaccinate or mask their children, but are okay if your kid gets sick; who don't want them exposed to Critical Race Theory or books that they deem to be thematically "pornographic" due to LGBTQ themes, but are all about allowing bullying to occur and are still mostly okay with their kids handling guns. Heck, the parents of the latest shooter apparently provided their son the gun as a holiday gift. It was only later they were surprised to learn that their son had taken the gun from an unsecured location within their home and brought it to school as a twisted "show and tell".

  If parent activists want to have a say over what their children learn at school then it is fair to expect that we have some say over what they learn at home. Parents should not have the ability to treat themselves like the gun manufacturers who have had laws adjusted to not hold them accountable when a gun is used as it is designed--to kill people. No, parents should absolutely be treated as either an accomplice or a co-conspirator when their child kills at school. No more of this child being tried as an adult, let the parents step in there and man up. 

It seems that since Congress is not doing much to stop the killing, it will rely on main street moms and dads to be responsible for the 220+ school shootings that happened this year and who knows how many next year. If we lock up enough parents who are lax with their children about guns, maybe there will be fewer children shooting up schools. I mean, like Republican Iowa Senate leader Jake Chapman said, "someone has to protect the children."