Kentucky Bill Seeks to Hold Parents Accountable For Child’s Gun Crimes

I’m never going to be completely comfortable with holding someone accountable for the actions of another. Especially in the legal sense.

Sure, it’s often not that cut-and-dried, after all. If my kid breaks a window with a baseball, it’s one thing to know I’m the one who will be expected to pay for it because she’s simply too young to have income. But where do we cross the line from what’s rational and acceptable and into a realm of expecting parents to be all-knowing and all-seeing over their kids’ lives?

A bill in Kentucky is seeking to step right up to that line without quite crossing it. The question is, does it succeed?

Kentucky’s legislature is primed to consider a bill in the new year that would make parents responsible for their juvenile child committing a crime involving the discharge of a firearm.

State Rep. Kim Banta, R-Erlanger, modeled her legislation after similar laws that hold parents accountable for property crimes and motor vehicle accidents.

…

“The most important thing is that I am absolutely not trying to stop gun sales or enact gun control,” Banta told Fox News Digital in a Friday interview.

“I’m simply trying to make parents aware that whether it is driving a car or doing anything else their child does, they need to know what they’re doing, and they need to exercise caution.”

Similar to the language in the car-crash law, Banta’s bill imputes “negligence or willful misconduct” of a minor on their parents/guardians for civil damages stemming from injuries to another person that are caused by a person with a gun.

Factors in determining parental liability include whether the elder allowed the child to have the gun, was aware of previous gun law violations or believes the minor to have the propensity to be violent, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Now, this is a far cry from what some want to do with regard to punishing parents for their kids’ actions. This deals with civil litigation, not criminal charges, which is a good first step.

Further, this measure doesn’t just blanket punish people. There has to be some reason for the parent to be aware that there’s an issue. I have absolutely no issue with holding the adult accountable if they actually let the kid have a gun. While many kids can in fact be trusted with access to a firearm, if you judge wrongly, that’s on you.

Gun law violations should be a pretty big warning flag as well, as is the kid being violent. If your kid falls into those categories, you should probably take steps to make sure they’re not armed.

However, I still have an issue.

Parents can do everything right and still not be able to stop their kids from doing something vile or stupid. Nightly searches of the bedroom don’t do any good if the gun is stored somewhere else, after all.

So I do think there needs to be provisions in place so that parents who do everything right aren’t being hammered for not being psychic, but this is a lot better than some of the other measures I’ve seen that try to do the same thing. Does that make it a good bill? I honestly don’t know right now.

But it is one that I’m not going to expend too much energy over either way.