In your opinion, should parents be held legally responsible for gun crimes carried out by their children?

👍 Yes (69%) – "I truly believe that raising your children constitutes a legal imperative to do what's best for society. You are obligated to do your best as an adult and that is passed down to your kids. Society should feel safe when around each other. Persons acting in an immoral or distressing manner have no rights to incapacitation of others."

• "In a case like this where a parent supplies, or gives access to, a firearm to a child that has known psychological problems and has made threats of harm, then that parent bears some responsibility for the violence."

"Given there may be situations where things happen in spite of diligent parenting, many of these shootings appear to result from dysfunctional families or parents exemplifying their anger and frustrations in front of the child."

• "If parents can be held liable for parties held at their house where serving to minors alcohol is involved, it seems that parents should be held responsible for giving their kids something far more dangerous to others."

"I believe parents need to take more accountability for their parenting, or lack there of. It’s an epidemic that parents want the schools or outside entities to police their children. While not takings their own measure to communicate find out who they hanging out with, what are the watching, what are their interests, what’s on their mind, and what they maybe struggling with. Kids have their own minds and yes they can make their own decisions, but parents have a great influence."

• "I think it should be examined on a case by case basis. In the cases of the Michigan and Georgia shooters, their parents absolutely knew their child's mental health history and still provided them access to guns. That is complete negligence on their part and it ended in the deaths of children in both cases. It's standard aiding and abetting."

👎 No (12%) – "The legal implications of having knowledge of someone's ideas about a crime or having shared access to some item that could aid in a crime could reach beyond school shootings to any crime. There may be the argument for a civil case, but I think criminally, it is a dangerously slippery slope."

🤷 Unsure/other (19%) – "It depends on the circumstances. If the parent either buys the weapon for the child or has inadequately secured weapons in the home, then yes. If, on the other hand, the parent exercised expected cautions regarding weapons and the child surreptitiously subverts these, then no"

• "I think it's situational. Let's take these two cases for example that were cited in the article... it was clear that these parents knew their children had issues, knew the children had access to weapons or provided the weapons even... I think it would be different if a teenager went rogue and managed to obtain a weapon on their own or even if the parents had weapons but they were locked and their child broke into it to obtain the weapon, those are very different situations. Those are not parents essentially helping their child carry out a crime."