Another day, another school shooting in America

Another day, another school shooting in America. I didn’t read further. It was a story I already knew. Until it wasn’t.

Until I learned that the 15-year-old Crumbley boy was to be tried as an adult – an adult?

Find me a 15-year-old adult and I’ll swap it for a unicorn’s egg – and that his parents had gone on the run because they were being charged too.

Now I was fascinated. If my child was arrested, no matter what they’d done I’d be running towards the jail not away from it.

Perhaps they should charge the parents with abandonment of a minor as well.

Although, of course, overnight Ethan Crumbley had become an adult… But what really sucked me in was the timeline, as told over his family’s social media posts.

On Friday 26 November, the day after Thanksgiving, dad James took his son Christmas gun shopping (just like the Baby Jesus would have wanted).

They purchased a 9mm handgun. Good times. That afternoon, Ethan put a photo of the gun on social media, captioned: “Just got my new beauty today.”

On Saturday, mom Jennifer posted: “Mom and son day testing out his new Christmas present.” All the feelz.

On Monday, Ethan’s school contacted his mother because he’d been searching ammunition on his phone in class.

She SMSed him: “Lol I’m not mad at you, you have to learn not to get caught.” So many lols.

On Tuesday, a teacher found a drawing of a gun and a corpse on Ethan’s desk, with the words “blood everywhere” and “the thoughts won’t stop, help me”.

His parents were called to the office, shown the picture, and told to get their son counselling within 48 hours.

Ethan went back to class. That afternoon, Ethan came out of the bathroom and went on a shooting spree, leaving four kids dead, seven wounded.

The news quickly spread. His mom SMSed: “Ethan, don’t do it”; his dad called the police saying a gun was missing from their house.

On Friday night, Ethan’s hysterical parents were arrested. But guns are not the problem, right?

Because guns don’t kill people, people kill people.

And it could never happen to you, or so thinks every gun-toting, doting parent like Jennifer and James Crumbley. Lol indeed.