This latest case is a real edge case that tests my principles and makes me want to compromise them ad-hoc because of the facts on the ground.
But in general, I am _extremely_ uneasy with this idea of punishing third parties for crimes committed by someone else.
The parent/child angle complexifies things, so let's ignore that for a second and talk about principles. And let's shift from guns to something else where the issue is clearer: free speech.
There has been a definite move in society to criminalize all kinds of speech on the grounds of its consequences. But every time this happens, there's a really important factor that gets papered over. The basic logic goes like this (for example): "We can't permit people to publicly spout hate speech, because they might inspire someone to act on it".
Here's the thing tho: acting on it is already illegal. If I say "damn I wish someone would kill those [fill in your disfavoured group here]", it's still illegal for someone to do that. It doesn't just magically become ok for them to do that just because I told them to. In fact, one of the moral and legal obligations that people have as citizens in a free society is to use their brains, think critically, and respond to that hate speech with "how about I don't".
For some reason, this always gets ignored. The law, and the public in general, want to act as if citizens of this country are mindless automata, powerless to resist the words of some random person on the internet. And this is bad for two very important reasons
The first is because it creates basically an infinite liability that gives a fully general justification to just about any clamp down on free speech that the government wants to do. Virtually nothing in life is risk-free, and if you can justifiably silence someone just by drawing a tenuous line of causality between them saying something and some random third party taking an extreme action because of it, you can justifiably silence anything. For a silly example: I like to drive fast. I have a fast car. I talk about driving fast. Someone could shut me up on the grounds of "you brag about your fast car, some idiot is gonna go 90mph while drunk driving, and kill someone!". This sounds absurd to us, but, it's not meaningfully different from "you complain about [minority] online, someone's gonna go shoot them". Maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's still illegal either way, they've still committed a crime either way, and it had nothing to do with me or my speech either way.
The second is less talked about I think, but even more important, and that is that it erodes the responsibility from the person actually committing the crime. That's really, really bad. First off, because knowing you will suffer the consequences of your actions is a major disincentive to doing crime in the first place. If you think, "oh well, I'll go shoot someone but then blame XYZ thing I read online", maybe you're more likely to go shoot someone because you think someone else will get in trouble instead. Secondly, our entire criminal legal system is premised on the idea of people being responsible for their actions, so if suddenly we're saying that third parties are responsible for motivating them, then the entire concept of eg jailing someone is nonsensical. And third, in the general case, as a trend in society, we do not want to live in a world where nobody takes responsibility for their actions.
When some person decides to go on a murder spree, the correct social response is to shoot that guy in the head to stop him from murdering more people. It's not to arrest _someone else_ for motivating him. Like I said above, this specific case is reaaaaally an edge case, because there is a sense in which parents are responsible for the actions of their children, in a way that does not apply to my examples above. But still, it's the wedge. It's how it starts. Mark my words, this is a dark path we do not want to go down.
> there is a sense in which parents are responsible for the actions of their children, in a way that does not apply to my examples above
When a child is a toddler, parents have complete responsibility for the child's actions. When the child turns 18, they have no more responsibility than they would for any other adult. Every year in between slides things along that spectrum from infancy to adulthood. It's really hard to define any clear lines. And it's really easy to come up with post hoc "how could you not have seen this coming" arguments that defendants would have a very hard time refuting. But the only difference between those defendants and everyone else is that everyone else had the overwhelmingly likely outcome where nothing happens. The defendants had the one-in-a-million fluke where it went bad. Criminal negligence is a thing, and sure, there are examples where it could attach to parents. But as you say, it's really really dangerous. Prosecutors and politicians are not exactly strict Bayesians in these situations. They'll just indict the parents, dig through texts, an inevitably find something that looks bad.
As an aside, and this is probably preaching to the choir, everyone just automatically assumes that guns are why school shootings happen. They take it for granted that school shootings are just, like, a force of nature, and I don't understand why.
School shootings did not happen like they do now, a hundred years ago, despite firearms being much more commonplace, socially acceptable, and less regulated.
I also can't help but think back to my Canadian highschool experience. From grades 7 through 12, there were exactly two incidents of violence at my school. One was a Special Ed kid who had a freakout and just kind of ran around the school screaming, but didn't actually do any violence. The other was when a kid from our rival highschool came by at lunch hour and pepper sprayed a guy because his girlfriend cheated on him with that guy.
If "the reason for school shootings is guns" was true, we would expect my highschool to have had just as much violence, just, not with guns. But, my highschool basically had zero violence. If people really cared about stopping school shootings you'd think they might step back and ask why so many kids want to shoot up schools in the first place. But then you might have to actually grapple with serious social issues, and it's way easier to just fuck those republicans out of their rifles.
A little girl was shot in the head as she held her parent's hand crossing the street. Do you think they are rushing to charge LeDarrius' parents with a crime over it?
Something both the Crumbley's and the Gray's have in common: they are White. There are plenty of black minors that commit mass shootings in America and yet their parents (or parent) are not charged. America's view of mass shootings, aided and abetted by the media, is driven by race more than any other factor. There is a reason that the Gun Violence Archive doesn't collect demographic data on their shooters and blocks people on social media that ask why they don't.
As someone with eyeballs and common sense, this is obvious to me. But I am a Canadian in the US, and I talk to my Canadian family who watch Canadian news reporting on the US, and they are completely oblivious to this dynamic. And then when I try to explain it, no matter how neutrally and matter of fact, they just all call me racist. Hate numbers though they may be, 13/52 is a reality, and given that reality, the social response to violent crime by race is absurd, to put it mildly
This latest case is a real edge case that tests my principles and makes me want to compromise them ad-hoc because of the facts on the ground.
But in general, I am _extremely_ uneasy with this idea of punishing third parties for crimes committed by someone else.
The parent/child angle complexifies things, so let's ignore that for a second and talk about principles. And let's shift from guns to something else where the issue is clearer: free speech.
There has been a definite move in society to criminalize all kinds of speech on the grounds of its consequences. But every time this happens, there's a really important factor that gets papered over. The basic logic goes like this (for example): "We can't permit people to publicly spout hate speech, because they might inspire someone to act on it".
Here's the thing tho: acting on it is already illegal. If I say "damn I wish someone would kill those [fill in your disfavoured group here]", it's still illegal for someone to do that. It doesn't just magically become ok for them to do that just because I told them to. In fact, one of the moral and legal obligations that people have as citizens in a free society is to use their brains, think critically, and respond to that hate speech with "how about I don't".
For some reason, this always gets ignored. The law, and the public in general, want to act as if citizens of this country are mindless automata, powerless to resist the words of some random person on the internet. And this is bad for two very important reasons
The first is because it creates basically an infinite liability that gives a fully general justification to just about any clamp down on free speech that the government wants to do. Virtually nothing in life is risk-free, and if you can justifiably silence someone just by drawing a tenuous line of causality between them saying something and some random third party taking an extreme action because of it, you can justifiably silence anything. For a silly example: I like to drive fast. I have a fast car. I talk about driving fast. Someone could shut me up on the grounds of "you brag about your fast car, some idiot is gonna go 90mph while drunk driving, and kill someone!". This sounds absurd to us, but, it's not meaningfully different from "you complain about [minority] online, someone's gonna go shoot them". Maybe they will, maybe they won't. It's still illegal either way, they've still committed a crime either way, and it had nothing to do with me or my speech either way.
The second is less talked about I think, but even more important, and that is that it erodes the responsibility from the person actually committing the crime. That's really, really bad. First off, because knowing you will suffer the consequences of your actions is a major disincentive to doing crime in the first place. If you think, "oh well, I'll go shoot someone but then blame XYZ thing I read online", maybe you're more likely to go shoot someone because you think someone else will get in trouble instead. Secondly, our entire criminal legal system is premised on the idea of people being responsible for their actions, so if suddenly we're saying that third parties are responsible for motivating them, then the entire concept of eg jailing someone is nonsensical. And third, in the general case, as a trend in society, we do not want to live in a world where nobody takes responsibility for their actions.
When some person decides to go on a murder spree, the correct social response is to shoot that guy in the head to stop him from murdering more people. It's not to arrest _someone else_ for motivating him. Like I said above, this specific case is reaaaaally an edge case, because there is a sense in which parents are responsible for the actions of their children, in a way that does not apply to my examples above. But still, it's the wedge. It's how it starts. Mark my words, this is a dark path we do not want to go down.
> there is a sense in which parents are responsible for the actions of their children, in a way that does not apply to my examples above
When a child is a toddler, parents have complete responsibility for the child's actions. When the child turns 18, they have no more responsibility than they would for any other adult. Every year in between slides things along that spectrum from infancy to adulthood. It's really hard to define any clear lines. And it's really easy to come up with post hoc "how could you not have seen this coming" arguments that defendants would have a very hard time refuting. But the only difference between those defendants and everyone else is that everyone else had the overwhelmingly likely outcome where nothing happens. The defendants had the one-in-a-million fluke where it went bad. Criminal negligence is a thing, and sure, there are examples where it could attach to parents. But as you say, it's really really dangerous. Prosecutors and politicians are not exactly strict Bayesians in these situations. They'll just indict the parents, dig through texts, an inevitably find something that looks bad.
As an aside, and this is probably preaching to the choir, everyone just automatically assumes that guns are why school shootings happen. They take it for granted that school shootings are just, like, a force of nature, and I don't understand why.
School shootings did not happen like they do now, a hundred years ago, despite firearms being much more commonplace, socially acceptable, and less regulated.
I also can't help but think back to my Canadian highschool experience. From grades 7 through 12, there were exactly two incidents of violence at my school. One was a Special Ed kid who had a freakout and just kind of ran around the school screaming, but didn't actually do any violence. The other was when a kid from our rival highschool came by at lunch hour and pepper sprayed a guy because his girlfriend cheated on him with that guy.
If "the reason for school shootings is guns" was true, we would expect my highschool to have had just as much violence, just, not with guns. But, my highschool basically had zero violence. If people really cared about stopping school shootings you'd think they might step back and ask why so many kids want to shoot up schools in the first place. But then you might have to actually grapple with serious social issues, and it's way easier to just fuck those republicans out of their rifles.
Stop making me think...And think hard.
Another excellent writing piece.
Thanks!
Couldn’t help but notice this today.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/09/parents-are-more-likely-to-keep-unlocked-loaded-guns-if-kids-get-gun-lessons/
Like most of the anti-gun research, I’d be no surprise if this one contains serious errors too.
What's crazy about this is how unbelievably uneven it is applied.
Here is one awful story from a couple years ago:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/16-year-old-arrested-chicago-shooting-killed-8-year-old-girl-rcna13726
A little girl was shot in the head as she held her parent's hand crossing the street. Do you think they are rushing to charge LeDarrius' parents with a crime over it?
Something both the Crumbley's and the Gray's have in common: they are White. There are plenty of black minors that commit mass shootings in America and yet their parents (or parent) are not charged. America's view of mass shootings, aided and abetted by the media, is driven by race more than any other factor. There is a reason that the Gun Violence Archive doesn't collect demographic data on their shooters and blocks people on social media that ask why they don't.
As someone with eyeballs and common sense, this is obvious to me. But I am a Canadian in the US, and I talk to my Canadian family who watch Canadian news reporting on the US, and they are completely oblivious to this dynamic. And then when I try to explain it, no matter how neutrally and matter of fact, they just all call me racist. Hate numbers though they may be, 13/52 is a reality, and given that reality, the social response to violent crime by race is absurd, to put it mildly