I really feel bad for the shooter’s parents in the Oxford school killings in Michigan. The prosecutor in the case set the stage for what really is a rush to judgment and gross violation of innocent until proven guilty assumption when Karen McDonald essentially stated that she was a mom, and that was supposed to be the reason she destroyed the lives of a married couple already suffering through the loss of their son. Yes, their son was the shooter who killed four other students in the hallways of their school and wounded seven others. There’s no question it was a tragedy, and upon hearing of the case, the first thing that jumps out is that much of the damage could have been averted if teachers had been armed to stop the 15-year-old kid. There is plenty of blame to go around for the tragedy, but what the public school and the prosecutor are looking for is easy blame for really the process failures that most government schools are suffering from. The question of why the kid felt he had no other option but to kill other students is what needs to be dealt with. But Karen McDonald expects to glaze over all that and instead seek to throw red meat at the situation by prosecuting the parents for buying the shooter the gun he used for the crime, which makes this case something else entirely. This case is no longer about bringing justice to the shooter, but who essentially is the parent of a child and sending out the message to gun owners that they could be prosecuted just for buying a gun. There are apparent politics at play which has much more far-reaching ambitions that make this a unique imposition for all of us.
When we hear of these school shooting cases, the kids are usually from broken homes and often have lifestyles that embody heavy marijuana use. In this case, however, we don’t know about the drug use, but it’s about a father and mother married trying to help their son. We don’t know the circumstances for which they bought him the SIG as a Christmas present on Black Friday of 2021, but it likely had some motive of empowerment. Based on the social media postings by the kid and the parents in general, they obviously were trying to overcome some family issues. Was the kid bullied and the parents trying to help the child feel empowered? Based on my experience, I would say that will turn out to be the case. Buying kids guns and teaching them how to use them is an American tradition. And public schools have made it clear they seek to eliminate that ritual. Public schools are anti-family, anti-gun, and all about centralizing the management of children. The school was too quick to blame the parents for not making their recommendations. I could list hundreds of cases right now where schools put themselves in a tug of war with the parents over power with children, so I can see why the parents might not be inclined to listen to what the school was telling them, including not believing that the drawing depicting a mass school shooting was even authentic. Based on the parents’ reaction in their comments before and after the shooting, it is evident that they viewed the school as intruding on their rights as parents. Of course, anger often distorts reality, and in this case, it likely prevented them from seeing just how damaged their kid was in the matter leading up to the shooting.
Imagine what it would be like for them to find out they have lost their child forever now that he shot up a school. It was likely very traumatic, and now the media is outside covering everything you are doing. Of course, they would want to console each other and seek refuge somewhere where they could think the situation through. Now, not only have they lost a child, but they are now the targets for a manhunt which the media fanned the flames into a national story. They were hunted down, arrested, and separated when they needed to help each other. They were paraded around in front of the cameras as criminals, guilty, and must prove themselves innocent from behind a jail cell. What was the message to the world? If you buy a gun for someone, you could be prosecuted, and the state will destroy every aspect of your life, starting with your family. It’s for the greater good in this new Soviet-style media culture, which is directly connected to our state and federal government. That’s not to say that the people who lost their kids in the shooting aren’t terribly sad as well, and they surely want justice. But the government, in this case, was quick to partner with the public school to make a strong case for something much deeper, who controls the child. Is it the parents or the school? We already know how the left views the matter; it’s been a national story this year. And in this case, the prosecutor, because she’s some kind of panicky mom, assumes that all the Bill of Rights for the parents can be suspended and that the state has ultimate power over the American family.
By the time this case is heard in court, I’m sure we’re going to learn that the pressures of the school on the kid were one of the most significant contributing factors to the violence. And tug of war between the school and the parents over who controls a growing child’s life will prove to be the smoke of the actual fire. The state and its government schools view their role as co-parents of all children. They’d like more authority than that, but when they call the parents at home over every little panic, they expect the parents to listen to their “expert” class opinion. If the parents reject those opinions, as they often do, of course, the state finds this alarming. In this case, the parents truly missed the mark, and the school and prosecutor have an easy time crying foul. The parents should have never let their child have access to that newly bought gun. Part of purchasing a gun and giving it to a child is to have a managed teaching moment with them that they grow in to. You can’t just give them a gun to make them feel empowered without major instruction. The gun should have been locked up in the home and only taken out to take the kid shooting, to learn how to use the weapon. So the parents clearly made a mistake in the management of buying a gun and owning it. But again, I could rattle off dozens of cases that I know of right now where schools mess up the lives in detrimental ways of their students all the time, and they don’t get prosecuted like this, treated this way by the media. It often gets covered up when they get caught, especially when a teacher molests students in perverted and destructive ways. Some students threaten to kill other students that schools miss all the time, and usually, it doesn’t happen. But because this time it happened to the parents and the school had put out the alarm ahead of time, the prosecutor, the state, and the government ran media, in general, wanted to throw the book at the parents when in fact, it was likely the school that caused the original problem. And in that way, this is an attack on all of us. The state has all the power and authority, and if they say we are guilty, we can have our whole lives overturned instantly. We can be thrown in jail, separated from our loved ones, and isolated from logic. Then, and only then, can we start the path to prove our innocence, which for these parents may take the rest of their lives. The state and the school have ruined their lives because they bought a gun for their child. The actions against the parents’ behavior aren’t about justice; it’s about attacking America’s gun culture and implementing their progressive plan that states that the school is the real owner of the children, and if we get in the way, we will have our own lives destroyed.
Rich Hoffman
The Gunfighter's Guide: 