S3 E8 - How NOT to Stop School Shootings - The Oxford Way

If you want to keep having a school shooting every nine months or so, just do what they did at Oxford.

Give the school immunity and money.  Re-elect the politicians in charge.  Ignore the bullying and suicides leading up to it.

And put two people in jail who were not there when it happened because you're angry and guilty that their son is still alive when others are not. 

Commentary on trending issues brought to you with a moderate perspective.

Transcript

Our leaders say they want to stop school attacks, but do their actions bear this out.  Are we all safer with the parents of the Oxford shooter going to prison, today on the Tenth Man

The answer is, “no we are not”.  We’re sending the shooter’s parents to prison, Jennifer Crumbley was convicted  four days before Michigan’s safe storage law went into effect.   She’s going to prison for breaking a law that didn’t exist.  A child shot himself the very next day.  So that law is a failure already.

Once or twice a year a madman or now, a mad woman, mad kid, attacks a school.  You know the drill.  The press vows not to make him famous, but they do, the democrats beg the question that gun laws save lives, and people who can prove gun laws are ineffective are blamed for the actual deaths.  

The press and the politicians on the left advance their deadly gun-law agenda with the aid of ignorant women’s groups, the Moms Demanding Gun Laws.

Those people claim we have a school shooting every day, and see no problem with covering one that’s two years old while making that claim.  

Most of us, seem to want school attacks to continue, based on our actions.  What are we doing wrong? 

We’re Blaming All Gun Owners

James Crumbley like his wife was convicted of four counts of manslaughter.  He supposedly failed to act in a reasonable fashion, not storing his gun so his son couldn’t get to it. 

But James Cumbbley was a model gun owner. He bought gun, and bought a pistol safe the same day.  Only failure was leaving combination at the factory setting.  If the gun store had made him change it at the point of sale, he would have been found not guilty.  Oh the shooting still would have taken place, but even a prosecutor, defense lawyer and jury as stupid as all these we saw in the trial would have been unable to find him guilty.

They’re stupid, because a teen with access to tools can get into any pistol safe. 

You see prosecutor Karen Mc Donald, said Crumbley could have put on the free pistol lock in ten seconds. True, but it’s just a child protective lock – anyone with tools and the internet can get one off in less time.

And she lied.  She only showed the actual installation of the lock.  To use a cable lock you must first clear the weapon and lock the slide open. Put this kind of lock in citizen’s hands and make them use it and someone will get killed.  Because with all the gun handling required, someone will eventually make a mistake – it’s a statistical certainty – and someone else will get killed.

Crumbley’s safe lets you safely store a loaded gun.  No manipulation required.  It also lets you keep a gun ready for use; it doesn’t defeat the purpose of having a gun. 

No conscientious gun owner uses the free cable locks. 

I said everyone in the court was dumb – we’ll explain why in our conclusion.  The result would have been exactly the same and for the exact same reason, had Crumbley used the cable lock.  You can probably guess why.

If you’re someone who is a parent in the Oxford School System, you may want to listen to something else, because we’re going to touch on the sensitive topics that have been ignored. You might share the blame, so this is fair warning.

Everyone is Forgetting “What’s Your Job Anyway”

There’s a primitive childish anger directed at the Crumbley’s  because something bad happened and we want someone held accountable.  Seems that this thirst for revenge could have been sated by executing the younger Crumbley within a week of the murders.  We have him on camera doing the deed – what question is there?  Unfortunately, Michigan was the first modern government in the world to abolish capital punishment.   Much like Wyoming was the first state to grant universal suffrage. A cynic might point out neither state is gaining population.  

The source of this primitive anger with the Crumbley’s is primitive guilt. Your main job as a parent is to protect your child.  Indeed, the prosecution tried to prove, unconvincingly, that the Crumbley’s did not have proper concern for their son. A legitimate tactic had young Crumbley been suicidal, but he was not.  And so the school and the courts had to make a pivot from you didn’t care or your son, to your lack of care caused the deaths of others.

Hold on.  Your first responsibility is the safety of your kids, granted, without letting him hurt others.  But it’s the school’s responsibility to ensure the safety of all kids. At the end of the day the Crumbley’s kid was still alive.  Ten other parents, and the school, all labor under the burden of having failed to a higher degree than the Crumbleys in their responsibilities.

Those are tough words.  But everyone is angry with the Crumbleys not because they didn’t take better care of their son, but because they didn’t take better care and therefore (?) something terrible happened. 

Something terrible happened, and it’s prima facie evidence that someone failed. Fine.  But the Crumbley’s failure was the lesser failure, by the pure facts of nature, and the definition of the school’s responsibility.

Everybodies’ anger comes from guilt.

If You Want to Stop Future Shootings, Remember the Big Problem

Lost in the discussion is Oxford High’s problem with bullying and suicide.  The democrats keep hiding the nation’s problem with teen suicide.  They say we have a school attack every day, as an excuse to attack gun owners.  There’s actually 1.5 school attacks per year and that’s too many, but there are a dozen child suicides every day. 2500 a year.  Every high school in America will have a suicide every ten years give or take.

Oxford high is more violent than average.  After neighboring Lake Orion schools had ten suicides in four years ending in 2011, Oxford hired their anti Bullying Counselor.  Oxford immediately had two suicides a year apart – one a middle schooler. 

Next thing you know Oxford was featured on ABC’s Nightline  talking about the most recent suicide and the bullying that led up to it. 

The problem continues today.  When Shawn Hopkins – the shooter’s guidance counselor who met with him twice before the shooting – gave his testimony, he said he had dealt with three suicide attempts at Oxford so far that year.

Exposed to his dad’s suicide attempt or threat, the shooter himself allegedly attempted suicide. 

Oxford’s Anti-Bullying Counselor has two suicides and a massacre under her belt.

Remember our first point – what is your job but to keep your child safe.  Everyone at Oxford knew about the bullying problem, and the suicide problem – it was on ABC news for crying out loud.

The counselors knew, and the parents knew.  All parents including parents of victims.  The prosecutor, Karen McDonald, especially knew – she is on the county anti Bullying task force and the Teen Suicide task force. 

The prosecutor failed, the school counselors failed, and parents failed.  Bullying/suicide was not in the investigation, the news or the trial, and parents who to this day are demanding answers for everything EXCEPT for bullying, have failed.

If You Want to Stop Future Shootings, Don’t Give Immunity

Prosecutor Karen McDonald in her closing arguments said the shooter’s father should not be considered innocent “just because he himself didn’t pull the trigger”.  Those are very close to the words of judge granting immunity to the school saying “firing the gun was the direct cause of injury” and concluded you could NOT charge someone else with the shooter’s crime.  Provided that “someone else” was a school employee.

Eventually everything we are saying here will also be said in court, when the Oxford community of parents eventually gets its way and a true investigation of the shooting is made. 

For now, the damage has not been undone because no one is investigating the school critically.

If You Want to Stop Future Shootings, Don’t Scapegoat

We can see that all of this misdirection is just a case of scapegoating.  The trouble with scapegoating is that punishing the wrong person because you don’t like him does not discourage further crimes or solve the problem.  It will only help politically.

Cuba currently has food shortages and high prices, and people are rioting.  But the government has a solution.  What do you think that is – free markets and capitalism that would allow farmers to make a profit and food to be in abundance?  No.  Cuba simply blames the American trade embargo.

Cuba has riots over food prices and they simply blame the US.  Done.   This will not increase the food supply.

In 1980 Iran had just taken fifty Americans hostage.  With some of the world’s largest petroleum reserves, they were running out of home heating oil and they blamed us.  We then gave them the oil they needed for humanitarian reasons.  America was  “the great satan” and the people there still believe that, and nothing gets better.

And Hitler blamed the jews for the recession and now the left blames MAGA Repoblicans for everything.

And if you read comments on line about the Crumbley trial you can imagine the Gun Law Obsessed rubbing their hands together with glee in the comments about “these gun owners” finally getting what they deserve.

Except scapegoating doesn’t work and does not solve the problem.  Holding accountable those who really caused the tragedy is what works.

You’re going to realize people in power can scapegoat anybody and they’ll do it to you.  Because they have tricks and the dumbest jurors in the world.   We’ll explain in detail in the wrap-up, and for now let me remind you to tell a friend about the best conservative podcast with no ads.  No outside ads when it opens.  No hidden merch promotions inside.  Just new original info in every episode, so invite a friend. He’ll thank you. 

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If You Want to Stop Future Shootings, Don’t Be Misled by “the Narrative”

Anyone following the trial of the Oxford shooter’s parents has heard it said over and over “they refused to take him home” and kids were killed as a result.  This lie is so pervasive that it goes uncorrected even when stated in parallel with the actual truth.  You can hear high school counselor Shawn Hopkins testify “we asked them to get him into therapy today if possible but within forty-eight hours and the parents agreed” and the assistant prosecutor immediately rephrases this to the jury “the parents refused to take him home”.  Play the videos, you’ll see it. 

We’ve dissected this before so let’s present a parallel scenario to the two meetings young Crumbley had with the school, and a third meeting that everyone pretends took place.  The first meeting was about his shopping for ammo during school hours, the second was about his being a possible suicide victim, and the imaginary meeting was when the school tried to prevent tragedy by sending him home.

Imagine you are driving your car when the airbag explodes killing your passenger, and you are tried for manslaughter as a result.  Here’s how that might happen.

You were driving a few days earlier and your car’s computer alerts you that you need an oil change, and you take it to the dealer to get one.

While you’re there the service manager tells you that your brake pads are worn and your car could become unsafe.  You say “will they still stop the car”?  The manager says, “yes for now but you should fix it as soon as possible”, and you make an appointment two days away.  The manager forgets, however,  to check for recalls.

That night you’re driving along and your airbag explodes without warning killing your passenger.  Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald puts you on trial because the car company can prove they sent you a postcard saying the airbag might explode, so it’s your fault. 

The parallels are these: The shooter was called to the counselor’s office on Monday for looking at ammo on his cell phone, an inappropriate activity for school.  That’s the oil change warning.

The shooter and his parents met with the same counselor and another staffer on Tuesday.  They told the parents “you should get him help or HE could hurt himself.”  That’s the brakes. You weren’t told to  “get this car off the road before someone gets killed”, but to get it fixed or it will get expensive and maybe YOU could get hurt. 

There was no meeting about exploding airbags. On the contrary, the school counselors said specifically they did not recognize the shooter as a danger to anyone but himself. The counselors invoked the parents’ role to protect their own child, and the counselors’ own role as protectors of ALL the kids.  Which one failed – counselors or parents?

If You Want to Stop Future Shootings, Stop Rewarding Bad Gov’t Behavior

After the Sandy Hook elementary shooting, the students were moved out of the school to other locations. The building was bulldozed, and never occupied again.  Oxford High, on the other hand was re-modeled and given multiple security systems.  It cost a lot of money, and missing security equipment didn’t cause the shooting.  Not having someone trained to operate the equipment they DID have, the announcement system, that did cost lives. 

Michigan schools were in 48th place for having enough school counselors.  Under Governor Gretchen Whitmer Michigan dropped to 49th, so after the fact, Whitmer got Michigan Schools $27 million to hire more counselors. A third of the money went to Oxford rewarding them for their failures.  Under the media definition of school shootings, where there’s “one every day”, nearby Oak Park High School had two shootings between the time of the Oxford rampage and the final jury verdict.  Where’s their money?   Oh, wait, Oak Park  - that’s an urban black school.

Then there’s the federal grant of $700k to the school given in July 2022 to help it cope with the aftermath of the violence.

The school also received new security systems including a new system for gun detection, free.  Like many proposals, the system does not prevent shootings.  It only enables the school’s existing security cameras to recognize a gun once it’s in the shooter’s hand.  So when you hear gunshots, the system will tell you that they are gunshots.

Washington also sent Oakland county $460k to help cover it’s costs in responding to the Oxford shooting.  The money was obtained by their representative to Washington Elissa Slotkin, and the Oxford City Council passed a resolution honoring Slotkin who – like Whitmer – did nothing to prevent the shooting but as a result of her so-called “leadership after all the deaths” is now the frontrunner in raising funds for her senate bid.

Yet with all this help, Oxford Schools is currently running a $5 million deficit.

Maybe Slotkin can get them some more money.  One place she could look is the $50 million per year she’s obtained for the CDC to support gun control laws.  Fifty million per year for five years to attack your rights.

Rosemary Bayer, Oxford’s representative to Lansing is also a victim hero, re-elected after the tragedy taking place on her watch because, even though she did nothing about the bullying problem BEFORE the massacre, she was really really sad afterward?

But the star politician capitalizing on Oxford has to be Jennifer Conlin.  Formerly a reporter for the New York Times, while covering the Oxford story she became traumatized.  Based on her trauma – you guessed it – she was automatically elected representative to the state house just by focusing her trauma on “doing more about gun violence”.

Stop rewarding the people who allow violence to take place, and you just might have less of it.

If You Want to Stop Future Shootings, Stop Rewarding “Survivors”

Crimes have victims and the victims at Oxford were the four kids who died and the seven others who were shot. No one else.

We have nothing but sympathy for those victims, as well as their friends and loved ones.

It’s understandable that the people close to the victims want something to be done to prevent similar events in the future.  But, sir, you are not the victim, your loved one was.

In criminal law, the crime is against all society, and the purpose of criminal law is to punish the perpetrator, not to compensate the victim’s family.  Any desire to make the family happy by punishing someone is improper.  It’s fine if it happens, but that is not the goal – that makes it a lynching.  But it’s clear by the prosecutor’s behavior that her goal was to get hugs from victim’s families. 

Nor are the families of victims experts on what is to be done to prevent future crimes.  That’s the job of the elected representatives of ALL the voters.  Family members asking for results is fine.  Saying what those results might be, and asking for someone’s punishment or advocating for more gun laws – or fewer gun laws for that matter - is not the family’s business.

This principal is especially true of the so-called “survivors”.

Do you know what a “survivor” is?  It’s anyone who claims the title and at one point a judge said that was just fine.  He said that anyone attending Oxford High School whether or not he was in the building that day was a survivor.

Well there’s money in that.  Michigan has a victim’s fund and anyone is free to apply for compensation from it.  Someone should do a FOIA request on that.  But that fund isn’t just for Oxford; it’s for any crime victim. 

Unlike the Compassion Fund.  Because if you’re an Oxford student there are millions of dollars up for grabs. An organization called The National Compassion Fund is passing out two million dollars to so-called “survivors” of the Oxford shooting.  The fund has distributed a total of ten million dollars to school shooting victims since 2014.   Oxford students, even the bullies, are eligible for twenty percent of that money.  That’s a strange percentage.  Twenty percent of all the compassion money goes to Oxford.  None to Oak Park, I wager.

But not every student is a survivor according to the fund.  You must have been present in Hallway 200 on the day of the shooting.  So a few hundred students will receive from several thousand to perhaps tens of thousands of dollars for being in the right place at the right time? – there’s no other way to say it. 

But a better example of these disgusting “survivors” is one who didn’t qualify for any money as far as we know.  That’s Dylan Morris.  Perhaps you’ve heard of David Hogg, a similar “survivor” of the Parkland FL shooting who became a gun control advocate.  This stance got Hogg into Harvard on a scholarship, and he now makes a nice living as an X (formerly known as Twitter) personality and by doing public appearances.  His friends are dead, but he’s now rich, famous, and influential.

Oxford has it’s own imitator of Hogg, and his name is Dylan Morris. As a member of the Young Democrats, the day after the shooting he went on Michigan Radio thanks to the influence of Elissa SLotkin, for the first of many appearances there.  Like Hogg, Morris started a gun control organization, and he too is now at Harvard demanding more gun laws. 

Neither Morris nor Hogg was anywhere near the shooting, yet both have parlayed their imagined victimhood into a career. 

Just as bad is the Oxford student body, the seniors of which demanded the right to wear orange cords at graduation to celebrate their survivorship.  Their request was denied. 

So what’s the problem with this? Simple.  They are not “survivors”.  Most of them, anyway. With respect to the real survivors, Real survivors have “survivor’s guilt”, a circumstance where you know a tragedy could just as easily have happened to you, but it happened to someone else, and you have to learn not to feel guilty about it. That’s what real survivors do.  They blame themselves, they go away to process what has happened and to cope.  These others, these so-called “survivors” are blaming anyone but themselves. 

And all of these kids and parents, including unfortunately those who lost loved ones, had the opportunity to do something directly about the problems at Oxford.  Unlike you and me.  They have had YEARS to address the suicide and bullying problem and did nothing.  Some of the people crying out for justice, might be punished themselves in a world of perfect justice.

And those kids who wanted to wear orange cords.  They shouldn’t have let them, they should have forced them.  The Oxford shooting was caused by bullying, and some of these kids demanding attention were the perpetrators.  Let them identify themselves as Oxford survivors, and let them be expected to explain in the future, what their role was in the tragedy, and whether or not they were one was one of the bullies who caused it.

If You Want to Stop Future Shootings, Don’t Let Idiots Be Jurors

We said earlier what a dumb argument it was to say the free cable lock that comes with every gun might have prevented the tragedy, and we gave several reasons the argument was a bad one.

But more than that, the argument was self-contradictory.  How?

James Crumbley was convicted for putting the gun into a gun safe which he hid.  The kid searched until he found it, guessed the combination and opened it.  Searching for the safe and guessing the combination; that’s two separate steps.

If Dad had used the cable lock, he would then have had to hide the key from his son.  Hiding just the key versus hiding the entire pistol safe.  Ethan Crumbley had just as much ability to look for the hidden key as he did to look for the pistol safe.  The cable lock comes with two keys so his odds of finding one are actually doubled, versus the hidden safe.

The idiot jurors convicted a man for hiding one pistol safe instead of hiding two keys. 

You cannot keep a gun, or drugs, liquor, money or car keys, away from a determined teen who lives in your house.  Only one thing will do that, and that’s morality.

Up next – Tuskegee Airmen, The Real Story

After that – The Tenth Man Goes Electric, or Don’t Sell an EV to a Skeptic, they are for Fanboys

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Eventually all we have said today will come out.  Most of it already has, right here, on The Tenth Man.