If parents are to defer to the government for intervention with their children, as we seemingly saw in the case of the Crimo family, we are lost.
If parents are to defer to the government for intervention with their children, as we seemingly saw in the case of the Crimo family, we are lost.
A s is now widely known, Robert “Bobby” Crimo III, 21, is charged with murdering seven parade attendees and injuring dozens more on July 4 in Highland Park, Ill. He allegedly fired 83 rounds with a Smith & Wesson M&P15 rifle — an AR-15 derivative — from a rooftop while dressed as a woman, using the disguise to disappear into the crowd as police moved to apprehend the killer.
During his escape, Crimo reportedly dropped the Smith & Wesson but had a second rifle in his car, a Kel-Tec SUB2000 — a hybridized “black gun” offered in pistol calibers of 9mm or .40cal. He then drove up to another Independence Day celebration in Madison, Wis., but decided against a similar spree there for unknown reasons. He was arrested later that day.
Attention now, however, is turning to the infuriating details of his interactions with his own family in the run-up to this massacre. Described as the loner-turned-gunman stereotype, Crimo was said to be suicidal, rudderless, and routinely hostile. His parents let him live in an apartment behind their house. He had a job before the pandemic at Panera Bread. Since then, however, he was a shut-in with limited socialization and a penchant for rage. Police were called to the house on separate occasions during his late teen years, for reasons reportedly including a suicide attempt and a threat to kill his family.
As Reuters reports:
Police had two prior encounters with the suspected shooter, Robert Crimo, now 21. In April 2019, they responded to an emergency call reporting he had attempted suicide. In September 2019, they visited his home after a report that he threatened to kill family members.
The family agreed to let police take a collection of 16 knives, a dagger and a sword from Crimo’s closet “for safekeeping,” according to a police report. Crimo’s father told police the weapons belonged to him, and they were returned later that day.
Crimo was not arrested or charged, and none of his family members pressed forward with a complaint against him, according to police.
It was after these incidents that Crimo’s father Robert Crimo Jr., a businessman and aspirant for local political office, sponsored his son’s under-21 application for a FOID card — an Illinois gun-purchasing license. Crimo Jr. defended this decision, saying:
I filled out the consent form to allow my son to go through the process that the Illinois State Police have in place for an individual to obtain a FOID card. They do background checks. Whatever that entails, I’m not exactly sure. And either you’re approved or denied, and he was approved.
It is technically correct that the authorities failed; the police should have made a record of his teenage outbursts, as these would have been grounds for his FOID to be denied. However, as the father, Crimo Jr. should have known his son’s ill humor better than anyone else and denied him the signature necessary to apply. Moral authority failed just as surely as did the state’s many gun strictures and police powers.
While an illiberal part of me might wish it, Crimo Jr. should not be prosecuted for what his adult son did. Parents want to think the best of their kids, and though Jr.’s comments grate, it’s this irrational faith in a child’s redemption that often brings along the rebellious 18-year-old to eventually become an admirable citizen later in life. Unfortunately for so many, this was not the case in Highland Park, and lives are destroyed as a result.
Recent mass shootings have revealed profound structural flaws in our public and private institutions. In the past weeks, we’ve learned how the police failed spectacularly in Uvalde, with multiple opportunities to avert disaster. In Highland Park, it appears indisputable that the family failed pertaining to the gun license. This reveals another weakness in the American system’s efforts to prevent mass shootings — just as we need police to act heroically (throwing themselves at an armed gunman to stop him), we also expect families, against every instinct, to imagine that their son is a danger to dozens of others if he explicitly shows signs of being one. Perhaps many of us faced with the same circumstances would not have done much differently, because until the evil is done, it is nigh impossible to imagine.
But the sad reality is that families cannot leave it to others — especially the state — to do the imagining. If parents are to defer to the government for intervention with their children, as we see in Crimo Jr.’s comments above, we are lost.