The tragic school shooting in Georgia has reignited debates about gun control in America. That may be a problem that never gets solved – but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a solution out there, and the way that this case is being handled could offer us an answer to help prevent more tragedies. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.
Transcript:
*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.
Mike Papantonio: The tragic school shooting in Georgia has reignited debates about gun control in America. That may be a problem that never gets solved, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a solution out there. And the way this case has been handled could offer an answer to help prevent tragedies. First of all, we have to admit this is a tragic occurrence in America, time after time and we keep saying, what a tragedy. And then the same people keep saying, well, we only have one thing to talk about, that’s gun control. Great to talk about that. But why don’t you talk about something that might make a difference like this prosecutor who says, you know what? I’m going after the parents. The parents, it’s not just negligence. They’re saying the conduct by the parents in this situation rose to manslaughter quality. Okay. Pick it up from there.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. What we’re looking at here is obviously according to the prosecutor who’s already arrested the dad, and they’ve said, listen, the dad obviously didn’t carry this out. What the father did was ignore all of the warning signs that have been there for at least one year, if not obviously longer, and still decided to give his child this high powered assault rifle as a present. Last year alone, this child had an incident where he was posting some threats online. So the school did an investigation. The police did. They talked to the parents, told them, listen, your kid has a problem. Something bad could happen. And they said, okay, well, we’ll get.
Mike Papantonio: We got this.
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Don’t worry about it. And then they buy him the gun. They didn’t do anything to address any kind of mental health problems he may have had and then tragedy strikes.
Mike Papantonio: To toughen him up. Did you see that article? To toughen him up. I’m gonna give him the gun. There’s pictures of blood on his, he’s obviously killed an animal and daddy’s put blood on his face, like that’s gonna toughen him up. The problem we have and I think if you look at also the Crumbley case that took place just last year. Was it last year?
Farron Cousins: Yeah. Last year was the prosecution.
Mike Papantonio: Yeah. And those parents were prosecuted and they were convicted. And the prosecutor did such a good job. This prosecutor in Georgia, I’m convinced, is gonna do a great job here. He’s gonna line up facts. He’s gonna say, at what point do we act responsibly? If the kid is in a room and he’s locked the door and he’s in there watching killing games all day long and he doesn’t speak to you. And people at school saying, we’re really worried about this kid. And he’s writing stuff like this Crumbley kid had written right before he killed all those people. It’s just at some point, the only solution is you have to scare the hell out of parents with the fact, you know, you’re going to go to prison. We can put you in prison for not being a parent. Not being a parent who knows what your child’s doing. Who is aware of all the machinations going on in his head as best you can be, and not paying attention to what has to be paid attention to. It’s not even a matter of just, hey, we’re gonna make a law to lock up a gun case. That doesn’t really solve it. The kid’s going to find out how to get in the gun case. But it’s the overall picture of don’t we have responsibility to raise a child that’s not gonna go out and kill other kids that go to school?
Farron Cousins: Exactly. And that’s why I think this is such a powerful move, just like what they did with the Crumbleys, because these parents in both instances saw all the same red flags. And that’s what the prosecutors are telling us, is that it’s not enough to see them. You as a parent have a duty to act. That’s what it is, the duty to act.
Mike Papantonio: Right.
Farron Cousins: If you do not do anything, or if you do something like then buy them the gun to make things worse, this is on you. And so hopefully, again, the gun control debate is always gonna be the gun control debate. We have too many politicians that will or will not do something. I don’t think that part of it’s ever gonna be solved.
Mike Papantonio: There’s two things you and I have talked about over the years. First of all, make insurance, make them have insurance that’s really expensive. Okay. You can own a gun, but you have to have insurance on that gun and the prices, they’re gonna be high. And parent, you have responsibility when you have all these things happening that are foreseeable, it’s foreseeable that something’s gonna go bad. Like the Crumbley kid, he was drawing these drawings of guns and bloodied up people during a math assignment. He’s sitting there drawing these, killing people while he’s in math. And he at the top of it says, my thoughts won’t stop. Help me. Help me. My life is useless. If you’re a parent, isn’t that like, my God, this is serious and you need to pay some attention? And right after that, he goes out and just kills kids. Kills teachers.
Farron Cousins: I mean, that one cannot be any more crystal clear. Literally calling out for help on something they knew they were gonna turn in. And we do have this mental health crisis here in this country, and we have such a poor apparatus to handle it, that things like this do happen more and more frequently. And I don’t know if it’s a lack of resources within schools, within families to get this mental health. But if we could get some kind of program together, maybe that could stop this. Because again, we’re looking at a situation where we’re not gonna control or solve the issue of the guns. But we can solve other parts of the problem that could reduce this. Yes, I know what I want my solution to be. I want the assault weapons off the streets altogether, and a lot of other folks do too. But if we can’t do that, okay, well, we gotta find another workaround quickly. And this could be it. Hold the parents responsible, do the insurance, get the mental health help for these individuals.
Mike Papantonio: Required.
Farron Cousins: Required.
Mike Papantonio: When a teacher says, I just saw this note, he’s drawing bloodied people and saying, help me, help me, help me. It’s required.
Farron Cousins: You know what? Maybe shave a hundred billion off the defense budget each year and direct it just to that. And hey, we could fund the whole thing.
