Last week, James Crumbley, like his wife weeks before him, was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for failing to prevent their son Ethan from murdering four students with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun in 2021 at his Michigan high school. Given the evidence of the parents’ reckless neglect, many have applauded the juries’ decision to hold the elder Crumbleys accountable for the egregious acts of their troubled son. Yet the convictions also stand as a stark condemnation of lawmakers’ failure to enact the kind of commonsense gun safety laws that might have actually prevented the deaths.

In the wake of the tragedy, a new secure storage law, Public Act of 2023, went into effect last month in Michigan. It mandates that unattended weapons be kept unloaded and stored with a locking device if it is “reasonably known” that a minor could be on the premises. If that law had been in place in 2021, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley might never have attempted the shootings, because his parents — despite their shortcomings — may have complied with state law. Instead, they were found criminally liable for not imposing in their own home the very restrictions on gun access that Michigan lawmakers had neglected to enact.

The statistics here are startling. Gun violence is now the leading cause of the death of children in the United States, with an estimated 4.6 million kids living in homes containing unsecured firearms. Seventy six percent of school shootings are committed with........

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