What about those "cool" parents that let the teenagers drink at their house, and one of those teenagers leaves in a car and kills someone? Should that parent be charged with some type of negligence?

The thing is prosecution isn't just grasping at straws. They are using existing laws on the books to determine if there was negligence. It appears so in this case.

she and her husband were leaving the kid home alone while he was growing up so often child services were called. the kid was also acting like this ( from the Detroit Free Press):

Instead of therapy or any sort of help they (the parents) handed this kid a gun.

What did they think he was gonna do?

It's an interesting question. We do that with pets.

Civil liability certainly seems reasonable to me.

I support investigating the lead up to school shootings and charging people with criminal negligence if the evidence points that way. That doesn't have to be restricted to parents. It could be pharmaceutical manufacturers who know about psychotic side effects or law enforcement who hadn't followed up on credible warnings or many other parties who may have played a part.

I think parents should be legally responsible for all their crotch spawn until the age of majority.

Don’t bring up shitty children, or you will pay the price.

I cannot see being held criminally liable for the actions of another individual ever being a good policy. However, the parents should potentially face charges for child abuse/neglect pending investigation in my opinion.

I believe that the actions of each individual are individual, it is true that parents may have some responsibility for the child's education or for not having realized before that something was wrong, but I do not believe that they are entirely to blame for their child's actions.

I haven't been following the story and I can't read the article without signing up. The hype, discussion, outrage or whatever resulting from this trial could provide a convenient narrative for disarming citizens. (I am pretty neutral on guns and I'm not American btw). I'm all about parents taking responsibility for their children!! However, when parents are absent or neglectful in their duties (which will always happen) this leaves an opportunity for other influences and/or potential radicalisation, so I wonder if there are other things at play here.

If they are your guns then absolutely. I’m all for owning guns but I’m also all for parents outsmarting their kids. If you can’t keep a gun safe locked so that your neglected progeny doesn’t mow down an entire class, then I would call that criminally negligent along the lines of attractive nuisance.

IMHO, it seems fair. She's responsible for her bad parenting, and should suffer the consequences, legal and/or social, depending on the context. But she cannot be responsible for the shooting, that would be too much of a stretch, and unfair, because people have free will. No matter what he's endured, the child still made the decision to shoot innocent people, and he should have known better.

This shouldn't be followed in every instance as most times, external influences affect the child but it is still bad when the parent doesn't notice it

The Free Press writes about the incident in their latest release, and yes, the mum was indicted for involuntary manslaughter (life sentence for the son). Here's the sad part:

It'd be interesting to know if SSRIs were involved.

in this particular case the parents were definitely negligent.

As someone who lives in Michigan less than two hours away from where this occurred, I applaud our attorney general for her involvement in this case. The dad goes on trial for the same charges next month. My state has also passed massive new gun legislation including universal background checks and laws which makes leaving your gun not locked away a crime due to this shooting at Oxford and the MSU shooting.

My state is leading the way on common sense gun legislation and I couldn't be more proud of the three women in charge of our state. And that's what pisses you guys off more than anything, that three women can lead a state more effectively than a man.