Eyes Wide Open

 For those of you who have come here looking for updates on Taylor Swift, I apologize. Today I will return to a more familiar ax to grind. 

The trial of Jennifer Crumbley continues with the defendant taking the stand in her own defense. If  your recollection of the players in each of America's mass shootings is not as refined as mine, I will remind you that Ms. Crumbley is the mother of the teenaged gunman who killed four people at Oxford High School in Michigan. Her son has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for his murders. Now mom and dad are in court facing charges of involuntary manslaughter. 

On the day of the shooting, the Crumbleys were called to the school for an emergency meeting about their son and what school officials called "a cry for help." Mom and dad checked in, and left their son at the school to return to work. They left their son behind. Shortly after that, the gun that Ethan bought just four days earlier took the lives of four fellow students and wounded seven more. He was fifteen at the time. 

The old saw about "we never believed this kind of thing could happen" really doesn't play very well here. During the search of the Crumbley home after the shooting, Oakland County Sheriff's Detective Adam Stoyek testified they found an open gun box and an empty box of ammunition for the 9 mm Sig Sauer handgun used in the shooting, as well as gun range targets with bullet holes taped to the shooter's bedroom wall and an empty bottle of whiskey next to his bed. They also found two more weapons in a locked gun safe that could be opened with the default code of 0-0-0.

Jennifer and her husband were found hiding in a warehouse after they failed to appear for their own arraignment. Sounds pretty normal for a concerned family unit, doesn't it?

Ultimately, I have a shred of understanding for the Crumbleys. If getting married is a crap shoot with a fifty percent chance of failure, raising a child in the United States can only be seen as doubling down on that initial bet. But just like driving a car or operating heavy machinery, its an activity best performed with your eyes open. 

Wide open.