CBS’ Boston Blue Claiming Parents Should be Responsible for Violence with a Gun Even if Guns are Locked Up

Understandably, people want to blame someone in addition to the teenager who murdered three people in this episode of CBS’ Boston Blue (Season 1, Episode 5, November 14, 2025). How is it possible that the parents didn’t foresee this shooting?

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Red flags are always easier to notice in hindsight. Indeed, since 1998, 51% of mass public shooters were seeing mental health professionals before their attacks. But none of the mental health professionals ever identified these murderers as a danger to themselves or others. In many cases, people had raised concerns about these killers before they carried out their attacks, but the professionals never recognized the threat. If experts miss the danger signs, how can we blame a parent for not seeing them?

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Should the families lock up their guns so only adults have access? Not surprisingly, crime rates rise when governments prevent people from defending themselves. When people are required to lock up their guns, criminals more frequently invade people’s homes and then are more successful in murdering or otherwise harming their victims. 

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If locking up guns could have prevented all five of the mass shootings committed by minors since 2000, including this latest shooting, there would have been 25 fewer deaths and 19 fewer people wounded. Of course, these killers may very well have obtained weapons in other ways. But for the sake of argument, let’s assume that all those attacks simply would not have occurred. The number of lives saved would still be only about 1/14^th of the number of lives lost in just a single year because mandatory locks kept people from getting to their guns in time.

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The horrific deaths and injuries from school shootings rightly get a lot of attention. But we don’t hear about the deaths that occur because people can’t readily access guns to protect themselves and their families. Those deaths are no less horrific. 

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The national media rarely mention defensive gun uses, even when young children use guns to save lives. But dozens of recent cases have been reported by local news outlets