How many fingers were on the trigger?

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There were warning signs. There often are. A disaffected young person, usually male, posts pictures of guns and unapologetic messages about killing people at a school.

Deadly school violence materialized again this week in a rural area of Georgia, near Atlanta. Authorities say 14-year-old Colt Gray took a semi-automatic rifle to Apalachee High School Wednesday and killed four people before being confronted and surrendering to a school resource officer.

Gray has been charged with four counts of felony murder. The world knows the boy’s name because Georgia officials wasted no time charging him as an adult, depriving the accused shooter of the public anonymity generally accorded to juvenile delinquents.

On Friday morning another development surrounding the latest school shooting was announced. Colin Gray, the father of the accused, appeared in court and faces two counts of second-degree murder, four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children.

An arrest warrant affidavit states that the elder Gray gave his son a semi-automatic weapon — an AR-style rifle — “with knowledge he was a threat to himself and others,” and even though the son had investigated by the FBI last spring for making terrorist threats against a middle school.

The sharply pointed prosecutorial decision against the elder Gray seems necessary. It seeks to explore and perhaps expand the culpability of the crime. It is premised in the question of criminal neglect. This is an encouraging legal development. When juveniles turn schools into hunting grounds, when should parents or guardians be held jointly responsible for failing to intervene to save lives?

The first parents convicted as accessories to a school shooting occurred early this year. A Michigan jury found that James and Jennifer Crumbley failed to take steps to prevent Ethan Crumbley, their then 15-year-old son, from arming himself with a 9-millimeter handgun and killing four students at Oxford High School in suburban Detroit in 2021.

The parents were found guilty of involuntary manslaughter and sentenced to at least 10 years in prison. The son pleaded guilty as an adult and is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

“These convictions are not about poor parenting,” said Oakland County (Mich.) Judge Cheryl Matthews, the sentencing judge for the parents. “These convictions confirm repeated acts, or lack of acts, that could have halted an oncoming runaway train.”

Minnesota has not experienced a nationally prominent school shooting in nearly two decades, after the ones at Rocori High School in Cold Spring in 2003 and at Red Lake High School in 2005. There have been, for lack of better description, situations of a more limited nature.

The makings of a classroom shooter are not random. There may not be a fully effective defense against the threat except for continuous vigilance and a willingness to report worrisome behavior. And, yes, that may involve reporting one’s own child, no matter how much of a betrayal it may seem.

There is little point to turning the latest school shooting into another moment decrying the ubiquity of firearms. We tread no new ground by eviscerating the gun lobby or amplifying anti-gun voices that would turn swords into plowshares.

What we need now more than ever are answers to a single question:

Why do so many dangerous warning signs continue to go unheeded?

We do know that these unheeded warnings only portend more future school tragedies rather than possible lifesaving interventions.

The lives of American schoolchildren and their educators will continue to hang in the balance until we do a much better job of identifying those children with access to firearms and an often-stated will to kill.