When You Didn’t Pull the Trigger But You’re Still Guilty: The Psychology of a Mass Shooter's Parents

The choices parents make can create conditions that allow their children’s violence to reach innocent people. In this episode of Cycles That Kill, Dr. Dylesia examines the cases of Ethan Crumbley (the Oxford High School shooter), the 6-year-old who shot his 1st grade teacher in Newport News, and Robert Crimo III (the Highland Park Parade shooter) through the lens of transferred lethality, willful ignorance as a parenting strategy, self-parentification, environmental neglect, developmental incongruence, complicit enabling, fear-based passivity, and access as a love language. These are not just stories about parents whose children committed acts of gun violence, they’re stories about the overlooked ways parental neglect, avoidance, and emotional absence can become the pathways through which harm impacts others.