Colin Gray (54) is alleged to have bought his 14-year-old son an AR-style rifle as a Christmas present.
This week his son, Colt, was charged with the murder of two fellow students and two teachers at his school in Georgia in the US and Colin has now been arrested and faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter.
The move to make parents accountable for their children’s gun crimes follows on from a case earlier in the year in Michigan when Jennifer and James Crumbley became the first parents to be convicted in a US mass school shooting when they were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison.
The hope among gun control advocates is that the Crumbley verdict would act not just as a punishment but as a deterrent.
The gun safety advocacy group, Everytown for Gun Safety, estimates that three in four school shootings are committed with a gun from the home of parents or close relatives and that 4.6 million American children live in homes where at least one firearm is kept loaded and unlocked.
As Emma Long, Associate Professor of American history and politics at University of East Anglia, tells In the News, the Crumbley case raises some serious questions that are likely to be played out in this new case in Georgia.
Presented by Bernice Harrison. Produced by Suzanne Brennan.
