For the first time in U.S. history, a parent has been convicted of murder for their role in their child’s violence. Colin Gray, the father of the student who shot and killed four people and injured seven others at Apalachee High School in Georgia in 2024, was sentenced to 15 years behind bars on Thursday.
Gray purchased the rifle that was used in the shooting for his son as a gift even after an earlier police investigation into his son for allegedly threatening a school shooting as well as his documented history of mental health struggles. As the judge said in his sentencing, Gray was “convicted because the warning lights were flashing brighter and brighter and you didn’t get him help and you didn’t remove his access to the guns.”
The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh thinks there’s another reason why Gray was sentenced to 15 years in prison: the color of his skin.
This is a penalty reserved for white parents specifically. No inner city black mom or deadbeat black father will ever be arrested, much less sentenced to 15 years in prison, for the savage crimes committed every single day by their kids. https://t.co/R5Uqudt8f6
— Matt Walsh (@MattWalshBlog) July 31, 2026
Walsh is a master of clickbait, and he did a fantastic job with this post. Unfortunately, he also completely misrepresented why Colin Gray was sentenced to 15 years in prison. He wasn’t convicted for his son’s crimes. He was convicted for his own role in the shootings.
In rendering his sentence, Judge Nicholas Primm said he had to measure Gray’s failure to act against the crimes committed by his son.
Gray gave the weapon to his son, Colt Gray, even when a few months earlier law enforcement had come to their home because the teenager had threatened to shoot up an elementary school, according to prosecutors.
“The weight of your crimes is tethered and tied to the acts of someone else, your son,” Primm said. “Two scenarios: You fail the same way in both. You fail to get Colt counseling. You fail to remove the guns from the house.”
So what about Walsh’s contention that “no inner city black mom or deadbeat black father” will ever be charged for the crimes of their kids? I’d say that’s generally because it can’t be proven that those parents supplied a gun for their kid before they went out and shot someone. We’ve certainly seen black parents charged when their child (or another) is shot because they gained access to their firearm.
Oh, and as for non-Caucasian parents charged for assisting their kid with a school shooting, a Hispanic woman from San Antonio has been charged with buying ammunition and “tactical gear” for her son as payment for babysitting his younger siblings, even though she allegedly knew he had violent intentions.
Should the parents of juveniles face charges when their kids are accused of committing violent crimes? Unless there is evidence that the parents knew or should have known about those crimes and were in a position to prevent them, no. And generally that is the standard, which is why charges against the parents of juvenile shooters are uncommon, regardless of the race of the perpetrator. In fact, Jennifer and James Crumbley’s convictions on involuntary manslaughter charges were the first of their kind, and that only happened a couple of years ago. Colin Gray is the first to be convicted of second degree murder for his culpability in the shootings at Apalachee High School. It’s true that in both cases we’re talking about white parents, but there have also been plenty of white parents of school shooters who have never been charged with a crime.
Are we more likely to see similar charges filed in the future? Probably, but in any case the key for prosecutors is whether or not they can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the parent or parents were grossly negligent in their conduct and that their conduct was a contributing factor in the violence inflicted by their child.
The gun control lobby would love to see every parent of a juvenile charged with a gun-related crime face charges of their own, regardless of their race. They’re in favor of anything that would increase the legal danger of gun ownership, and the lower the bar for parental culpability the greater the risk of owning a gun if your kids are still in the house. I think the real issue here is whether the bar gets lowered for charging parents for the sins of their children in the future. If that happens, Matt Walsh might be happy about more black parents getting charged, but I think the gun control lobby would be even more pleased.
Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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