Dad taught school shooter to hunt so he wouldn’t play video games
Before we get to the main event, let’s get caught up on the news coming out of the school shooting at Apalachee High School in Georgia.
Shooter Idolized Other Shooters
In my previous post about the shooting, I noted that 14-year-old Colt Gray may have had an unhealthy fascination with the Parkland school shooting. Now, ABC is reporting that Gray may have also had a fascination with the Sandy Hook shooting as well.
The Discord account used to issue the 2023 school shooting threat was the name ‘Lanza’ except spelled using the Russian alphabet. The name Lanza was the last name of the gunman at Sandy Hook.
As I tend to say, there’s nothing new under the sun. The Apalachee High School shooting is just another legacy of Columbine. For the past 25 years, the majority of school shooters of the disgruntled outcast variety, have had some kind of obsession with previous school shootings. The shooters at both Virginia Tech and Parkland had some kind of admiration for the Columbine shooters. So, it should come as no surprise that the next generation of school shooters would have their own heroes.
Most parents of school shooters are often unaware of the figures their children idolize online. This is either because they ‘trust their kid’s’ internet use or lack the know-how to monitor their devices. Since Colt Gray’s father, 54-year-old Colin Gray, doesn’t seem like the trusting type when it comes to electronics, I’m going to assume he didn’t have the know-how. Or maybe he just didn’t care.
According to the Washington Post, the Discord threat was as follows…
The user described his own plans to target an elementary school, while posting anti-LGBTQ+ and antisemitic views.
“let me give you an example of why I’m doing this,” the user wrote, posting a photo of a family holding signs showing support for their trans daughter. “I need to put an end to that. … im on the edge of a lgbtq massacre”
The person posted photos of guns.
The Bullying Defense
When the Grays were interviewed by law enforcement about the 2023 threat, Colin Gray made certain to note that his son was his son being “picked on” and “ridiculed” day after day at school.
That bullying allegedly consisted of being pinched and touched by other students at his school. That’s not a typo for punched. Colin Gray specified to law enforcement that his son was being pinched. Colin Gray added that his son gets flustered under pressure and couldn’t focus on his school work.
Now, I’m no fancy doctorin’ type, but if the kid didn’t like to be touched and got flustered easy, to me, that sounds like he had some kind of neurodivergent disorder. On the surface, it sounds like he somewhere on the autism spectrum, has ADHD, or both. However, neither condition is a defense for a school shooting. It’s been attempted as a defense multiple times, but to my knowledge, it’s never been successful. But I have to wonder if any attempt was made to get Colt Gray any kind of mental healthcare, or was Colin Gray the type that didn’t believe in that nonsense?
That statement raises a few important questions. First, was Colin Gray laying the groundwork for a ‘bullying defense’ for his son in case the earlier threat turned out to be real? The next question that always arises when the bullying defense is mentioned is, was Colt Gray being bullied because he admired school shooters?
This creates a self-fulfilling prophecy that many school shooters fall into. They express admiration for other shooters, prompting negative reactions from others. In response, they decide to carry out a school shooting, often framing themselves as the bullied outcast.
That just leaves us with another school shooter who believed what I like to call the Columbine bullying myth. The popular myth that emerged from Columbine is that the shooters were victims of bullying, when in reality, they were quite popular and even acted as bullies themselves. To this day, I have yet to see any concrete evidence proving that the Columbine shooters were bullied, at least not to a level that satisfies my understanding of the situation.
The Deer Hunter
But getting back to the 2023 law enforcement interview with the Grays, Papa Gray said the two do a lot of deer hunting, and that…
“We’re trying to teach him about firearms and safety and how to do it all, and get him interested in the outdoors.”
The father said he introduced his son to bow hunting and then eventually advanced to firearms.
He said his son shot his first deer in 2023. He said he has a photo of that moment, showing the boy with blood on his cheeks.
Ooh, foreshadowing. More on that later.
In Court
NBC News, reporting on the court appearance of both Grays, noted that Colt Gray has been charged as an adult with four counts of felony murder. Georgia has what’s colloquially known as the Seven-deadly-sins law. Under that law, minors as young as 13 can be charged as adults if they commit one of the seven deadly sin crimes. First-degree murder carries sentences ranging from life in prison with the possibility of parole after 30 years, to life without parole. Second-degree murder is punishable by 10 to 30 years in prison. Additionally, executing minors was ruled unconstitutional in the U.S. several years ago.
Meanwhile, Colin Gray faces four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder, and eight counts of cruelty to children. If convicted on all charges, he could receive a maximum sentence of 180 years. However, the actual sentence will depend on whether the terms are served consecutively or concurrently. In matters like this, I always root for consecutively.
Why Didn’t Police Do More?
Many people seem to be asking why no action was taken by law enforcement after the 2023 interview. As USA Today points out, there wasn’t a lot they could have done.
There’s only so much law enforcement can do to stop a crime like a mass shooting from occurring in advance, said Adam Winkler, a law professor and gun policy expert at UCLA.
“We have to be realistic about what you can accomplish in a society that has over 400 million guns and they’re very easy to obtain,” Winkler said.
A former FBI agent added…
“Because somebody interacts with law enforcement doesn’t give law enforcement the authority — federal, state or local or tribal — to constantly go back into somebody’s personal life and check on them and check on them,” Katherine Schweit, a former FBI agent who created the FBI’s active shooter program, said.
Mom Tried To Warn The School
Colt Gray’s mother, who lives 200 miles away, is said to have called Apalachee High School the morning of the shooting to warn them her son may be planning something dangerous at the school. She received a text message from her son that just said “Sorry Mom”.
A school administrator went to the classroom where Colt Gray was supposed to be, but…
There was a student with a similar name to the now-suspected shooter, and neither student was in the room when the school official walked in and left with the other student’s backpack.
Moments later, the shooting began.
As I have said in the past, the majority of school shootings going back to Columbine are almost always a perfect storm of coincidences and failures. This one is no different.
If there’s a list of people and entities who should have prevented the shooting, I’d say the school is at least close to the bottom.
School Shootings Just a Fact of Life
Wading into the political side of things, I guess I have to address ol’ couch-fucker himself, Republican Vice Presidential Nominee, JD Vance. But before we get started, whoever came up with the drag name of Ashley Furniture for Vance is a true person of genius.
As I’m sure most of you know, Vance was addressing a rally in Phoenix, Arizona, when he called school shootings as a “fact of life”.
“I don’t like to admit this. I don’t like that this is a fact of life,” Vance said at a rally in Phoenix where he offered prayers for the victims. “But if you are a psycho and you want to make headlines, you realize that our schools are soft targets and we have got to bolster security at our schools.”
His comments echoed what other Republicans have argued: that U.S. gun violence results primarily from mental health problems and not insufficient gun legislation.
“I don’t want my kids to go to school in a place where they feel like you’ve got to have additional security, but that is increasingly the reality that we live in,” Vance said.
He added that shootings happen in states regardless of the strength of their gun laws and that “to take law-abiding American citizens’ guns away from them” would not solve the problem.
Um…yes it would. If you take the shooting out of school shooting, you’ve solved the problem. The wheel is spinning but the hamster’s dead with this guy.
If school shootings are such a fact of life, one that Mrs. Garrett would never tolerate, why is this the only country where it happens on a regular basis, you fucking assclown?
And just for good measure, here’s a picture of the former Marine giving a speech behind bulletproof glass.
To be fair, he was a military journalist in the Marines and saw ‘no real fighting’ by his own account.
If Vance had a campaign slogan, it would be “Fuck them kids.”
Meanwhile, while addressing an LGBTQ+ advocacy group in Washington, DC, Democratic Vice-Presidential nominee, and everybody’s dad, Tim Walz responded to Vance’s tone-deaf statements.
“It’s a fact of life some people are gay. But you know what’s not a fact of life? That our children need to be shot dead in schools,” Walz said.
“That’s not a fact of life,” he added. “Folks are banning books, but they’re okay with weapons of war being in our schools.”
Internet Mob Strikes Again
Of course, the internet did what it always does, and identified the wrong person as the shooter. Many armchair ‘investigators’ on social media falsely claimed that a 14-year-old from Oklahoma with the same name was the shooter, spreading misinformation without evidence.
As someone who went through online harassment due to a case of mistaken identity, I can only imagine what this kid had to go through. At least I was an adult when it happened to me.
And of course, there are the people obsessed with teenagers’ genitals who have accused Colt Gray of being trans, but that’s all the time I’m going to give to that.
And now it’s time for your main event…
Touching Grass Through Mass Murder
Going back to the 2023 interview with investigators, Colin Gray said the reason he took his son hunting was to encourage Colt to spend more time outdoors and less time playing video games. This one hit a little close to home.
My dad was supposedly a multi-sport athlete. He played both football and basketball for a major Division I university. After college but before the Korean War, he played semi-pro baseball. He originally told me he played for the Philadelphia A’s, but changed his story as I got older.
A conflict rose between us when I was around 10. He wanted to live vicariously through me as an athlete. The problem was, I was a scrawny kid with no muscle and no coordination. All I wanted to do was play Tanks on my Atari. His training method was mostly yelling at me for not following through with my baseball swing.
My point is, all I wanted from him was to take just a little interest in the things I enjoyed, but since they weren’t sports, he couldn’t care less.
Now imagine you’re a dad and your forte is deer hunting. Instead of getting your kid to choke up on the bat, or trying to take an interest in their hobbies, you’re directing him to kill another living creature, first with bows and then with bullets. That could be a very mentally jarring experience for a young boy, especially if dad is taking him out in the woods to ‘toughen him up’ instead of seeking treatment for his mental health concerns. At this point, it almost seems like Colin Gray was training his son to be a killer. So what do you get a killer in training for Christmas? Why, an ‘AR-platform-style weapon’, of course. You know, instead of something like a new game controller or mechanical keyboard.
I have no idea what video games Colt Gray liked to play. Maybe our friend Jack Thompson will enlighten us on that matter. However, not every video game is Call of Duty or DOOM. The top two most popular video games of all time are Tetris and Minecraft. Not exactly murder simulators as some would have you believe. One of my favorite games of all time is Stardew Valley, a farming simulator where you cultivate relationships with the townsfolk along with your fields. And even if Colt Gray was playing ultra-violent video games, that was because Colin Gray either allowed it or didn’t care.
I’m just a little bit older than Colin Gray. But still, people from my generation view video games as being worse than fentanyl.
Let your kids play games. Maybe even try playing with them. If you do, it will definitely instill a better relationship than the Gray’s had.
