The father of a 14-year-old suspect accused of killing four and injuring nine others at a Georgia high school earlier this month was charged for negligence on his part to stop tragedy. 

This is a step in the right direction, as the guns used to terrorize schools are often obtained from the home. While some justice may be served, will it do anything to prevent the all-too-familiar horrors that afflict our schools?

With Colin Gray, the accused shooter’s father, authorities allege that he allowed his son to access an AR-15 assault rifle despite knowing “he was a threat to himself and others.” 

According to CNN, the same type of rifle was found in the school when the suspect was arrested. The father is formally charged with two counts of second-degree murder, nine counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.

The charges represent the second time in U.S. history where a parent was charged for their child’s alleged involvement in a school shooting. The first case came in 2021, when James and Jennifer Crumbly were charged by Michigan authorities after their son used a gun that was given to him as an early Christmas gift four days before a Nov. 30 shooting. Both the parents and the shooter were found guilty earlier this year.

While these cases are promising, the justice they serve is only in hindsight. Innocent lives were lost, families were destroyed and communities are left with thoughts for the victims and prayers that such a tragedy does not happen again. These do little to stop school shootings.

There are clashing opinions on how to achieve that end, though. Calls for new gun safety legislation are a frequent go to, and there may be some room for improvement in this case, as Georgia does not have a punishment for failing to safely secure firearms, according to The New York Times. But calls to ban certain weapons or add waiting periods and additional paperwork to gun purchases almost always meet political and constitutional challenges that drag out or otherwise stymie any changes.

Drastic improvement can be made, however, by enforcing laws already on the books. These include cracking down on straw purchases and holding officials accountable for not investigating warnings, a common theme in both the Georgia and Michigan shootings.

In the case of the accused Georgia shooter, the FBI said that he was the subject of an investigation last year at a neighboring school district that alleged the accused posted threats that he would shoot up that school on a Discord server. They could not link the threats to the suspect, who said he was hacked, and nothing more became of it. In addition, the suspect’s aunt told The Times he had a tumultuous home life and frequently “begged” for mental health help. 

The Michigan case also had opportunities to be stopped, even up to nearly the very end. In that instance, the shooter’s parents were called to school the morning of the attack. That occurred after a teacher saw the would-be shooter drawing pictures of a gun with fellow students bleeding. Despite these concerns, The Times reports that no one searched the backpack that contained the gun that would be used in shooting later that day.

Examples like these demonstrate where the problem lies: a failure of competency that makes up the rot in our public services. This decay has been with us for a while now. It is the same disease that has led to planes falling from the sky, astronauts being stuck in space and a presidential candidate nearly assassinated. We must demand more from our institutions to end the apathy that has so inured to these horrors that we have come to expect that we will never achieve change.

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