Do parents bear responsibility for Oxford shooting? This isn't a hypothetical question.

Who is responsible for a mass shooting?

Is it solely the person who pulled the trigger?

What if the shooter was 15 years old? What if the gun was a gift from his parents? What if when a teacher had expressed concern about the boy doing an online search for ammunition, his mother’s response was to text her son, “LOL, I’m not mad at you” and add that he needed to “learn not to get caught”?

What if the boy went to school, drew a picture on a math worksheet of a gun and a bleeding body, with the words “blood everywhere” and “the thoughts won’t stop, help me”?

What if when his parents were called to school, they declined a school counselor’s request to take their son home?

What if within hours, the boy emerged from a bathroom holding the 9mm Sig Sauer SP pistol his father bought on Black Friday and his mother had described in a social media post that same weekend as a “new Christmas present” for her son?

Is the boy who pulled the trigger solely responsible for what happened?

This last question isn’t a hypothetical one.

Four high school students are dead. We should remember their names. Madisyn Baldwin, Tate Myre, Hana St. Juliana and Justin Shilling.

And now jurors will be tasked with answering this question.

Crumbleys lived in Northeast Florida

A historic trial began last week in Michigan. James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of Ethan Crumbley, are charged with involuntary manslaughter. Jennifer Crumbley's trial is first. She becomes the first parent in America to be charged and tried in a mass school shooting.

Their son already has pleaded guilty and been sentenced to life in prison for killing four students and wounding seven others at Oxford High School in 2021.

We have so many mass shootings in America that they tend to run together. In the last two years since Oxford, we’ve had dozens of other school shootings with fatalities, including Uvalde. But for me, Oxford still hits particularly close to home.

Partly because one of my sisters lives in Michigan’s Oakland County, where Oxford High is located.

Partly because Ethan Crumbley’s parents used to live in Duval County.

James Crumbley went to Fletcher High. He and Jennifer, a Michigan native, were married at Hanna Park and lived in Atlantic Beach in the early 2000s.

While this is a small thread connecting Jacksonville what happened in Michigan, it still feels like a reminder of what we should know by now: This could’ve happened here.

At this point, it should be clear that mass shootings can happen anywhere in America. Red states, blue states, rural, urban, places of worship, movie theaters, concerts, night clubs, grocery stores, military bases, schools.

This is hardly the first time America has had a debate about who or what bears some responsibility for a mass shooting. That has become a routine part of the post-mortem, right along with thoughts and prayers. Sometimes they have involved lawsuits targeting gun manufacturers and security.

In the wake of the Dollar General shootings in Jacksonville last August, relatives of the three Black victims killed by a racist gunman filed suit against the store, the owners of the land it stands on, a company contracted for store security, and the parents of the shooter.

The 21-year-old gunman lived in his parents’ Orange Park home. And the suit argues they “owed a duty of care to the general public” to take precautions against potential violence by their son.

But the Oxford prosecution is a rare, maybe even unprecedented, step for a mass school shooting.

The Crumbleys each face up to 60 years in prison. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Defense quotes Taylor Swift's 'Bad Blood'

In opening statements for Jennifer Crumbley's trial, prosecutor Marc Keast told the jury she didn't pull the trigger that day, but “she is responsible for those deaths."

The defense attorneys defending the Crumbleys say their clients didn’t see the son’s chilling journal entries ("I will cause the biggest school shooting in Michigan’s history”) and never knew he would do what he did on Nov. 30, 2021, until it was too late.

During opening statements, defense attorney Shannon Smith said she had been listening to Taylor Swift on her way to court. She said a line from the song “Bad Blood” — Band-Aids don't fix bullet holes — summed up what was happening.

The prosecution, Smith said, has charged Jennifer Crumbley with involuntary manslaughter “in an effort to make the community feel better, in an effort to make people feel like someone is being held responsible, in an effort to send a message to gun owners.”

I’m neither an attorney nor a Swiftie, but a song titled “Bad Blood” seems like a curious starting point for a case involving the parents of a mass shooter.

This isn’t about saying parents are responsible for every action of their children. As prosecutors have said, there’s nothing illegal about being a bad parent. And I know good parents who have desperately and repeatedly tried to get their children help, only to watch them continue to spiral in directions that could be dangerous to themselves and others.

The Crumbleys not only didn’t get their son help, they gave him a gun.

Prosecuting them won’t fix bullet holes. It won’t bring back the dead. But should responsibility for this mass shooting start and end with the kid who pulled the trigger?

mwoods@jacksonville.com, (904) 359-4212

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Parents on trial for Oxford school shooting