Now both Colt, 14, and Colin Gray, 54, are charged in the killings of two students and two teachers Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Barrow County, outside Atlanta. Nine others were hurt, seven of them shot. The teen is charged with murder, and his father is accused of second-degree murder for providing his son with a semiautomatic, AR 15-style rifle used to kill children. Arrest warrants say the elder Gray did so knowing his son "was a threat to himself and others."

Jackson County authorities ended their inquiry into Colt Gray a year ago, concluding that there wasn't clear evidence to link him to a threat posted on Discord, a social media site popular with video gamers. The records from that investigation provide at least a narrow glimpse into a boy who struggled with his parents' breakup and at the middle school he attended at the time, where his father said others frequently taunted him.

"He gets flustered and under pressure. He doesn't really think straight," Colin Gray told the investigator on May 21, 2023, recalling a discussion he'd had with the boy's principal.

Shooting guns and hunting, he said, were frequent pastimes for father and son. Gray said he was encouraging the boy to be more active outdoors and spend less time playing video games on his Xbox.

When Colt Gray killed a deer months earlier, his father swelled with pride. He showed the investigator a photo on his cellphone, saying: "You see him with blood on his cheeks from shooting his first deer."

"It was just the greatest day ever," Colin Gray said.

An eviction upended the Grays' family in summer 2022. On July 25 of that year, a sheriff's deputy was dispatched to the rental home on a suburban cul-de-sac where Colin Gray, his wife, Colt and the boy's two younger siblings lived. It was following the eviction, he said, that his wife left him, taking the two younger siblings with her.

Colt Gray "struggled at first with the separation and all," said the father, who worked a construction job.

"I'm the sole provider, doing high rises downtown," he told the investigator. Two days later, there was a follow-up interview with Colin Gray while he was at work. He said by phone: "I'm hanging off the top of a building. ... I've got a big crane lift going, so it's kind of noisy up here."

Middle school had also been rough for Colt Gray. He had just finished the seventh grade when Miller interviewed the father and son.

Colin Gray said the boy had just a few friends and frequently got picked on. Some students "just ridiculed him day after day after day."

"I don't want him to fight anybody, but they just keep like pinching him and touching him," Gray said. "Words are one thing, but you start touching him and that's a whole different deal. And it's just escalated to the point where like his finals were last week and that was the last thing on his mind."

A year before they would both end up charged in the high school shooting, Colin Gray insisted to the sheriff's investigator that his son wasn't the type to threaten violence.

"He's not a loner, Officer Miller. Don't get that," the father said, adding: "He just wants to go to school, do his own thing and he doesn't want any trouble."

I am truly not one who's disinterested in the heartbreaking tragedy of school shootings, especially when we know what keeps them from happening in nearly every other civilized nation on this planet. When we hear a child had access to a weapon originally designed for warfare, it simply makes no sense, and we immediately blame the parent(s) for allowing it to happen.

I wanted to hate Colin Gray, but after only reading a couple paragraphs I came to an unmistakable conclusion: Except for the fact this father didn't make a habit of locking down all his weapons as a matter of practice - especially since his son showed obvious troubling signs - Colin was just a single dad trying to deal with a son challenged by mental health issues. Or in other words, a simple father dealing with all the cards life has dealt him in the best way he knows how.

At least by this rendering, this dad wasn't encouraging his son to be violent with their sharing of hunting, he was trying to connect with his son's self esteem, trying to make him more secure when confronting his fears and the bullying he's said to have been haunted by.

Let me be clear: Colin Gray deserves to be held responsible for his role in allowing his son access to a weapon he took to school and killed and injured innocent children and teachers who'd never done Colt any harm.

Having said that, I can still see myself in his shoes playing the cards I was dealt, and honestly - knowing how much you want to love and encourage your child when they have mental health struggles - there but for the grace of God,... under similar circumstances, it could have been my child.

It seems to me that you identify with Colin Gray,

I don't think that I 'identify' with Colin as much as it was the facts and details of his life are so familiar with thousands of fathers like him. I've never owned a gun, never encouraged my son to partake in any firearms related activities, so in the sense of the weapons at issue here, I couldn't be more different because I both respect and understand the double-edged nature of firearms to both protect and project lethality as a matter of their purpose.

This morning, there's stories about the mother having contacted the school to warn them about her son. Obviously, there are complications I have no idea about. But I guess my initial response to reading excerpts from the police report indicated to me a single father ironworker trying to raise his troubled son while dealing with all the other things swirling in and around their lives. I saw in these two, a common theme of modern life where parents have pressures upon them that my parent's generation simply didn't in the scale we see today.

And I wonder, what programs or specialists might have been able to provide a better path for Colt had he been willing or able to seek guidance and counseling. But it's equally possible that he rejected the help being offered to him.

But at the end of the day, people that shouldn't be, are dead and some injured. None of them deserved their fates. And that's where we are at this moment, with the future ready to extract punishment and retribution through our courts and laws. But we know it's going to happen again and again if we don't change the ways we deal with the conflict that proliferation of firearms causes due to their constitutional protections.

Maybe the answer with AR-styled weapons could be some kind of law regulating their non-use and storage - nothing affecting their non-criminal active use at all. Perhaps such a law might demand that when not in use all of these weapons must either have trigger locks attached or be kept in locked gun safes or other lockable devices. Maybe even making it against federal law to sell or transfer any firearm that doesn't come with a working trigger lock at the point of sale. The trigger lock manufacturers would certainly be happy, and just maybe we could put a meaningful impediment between teenagers and weapons capable of shooting many people in very short periods of time.

#3 Tonyroma The father should be held responsible.

Did you miss my unqualified statement?

Let me be clear: Colin Gray deserves to be held responsible for his role in allowing his son access to a weapon he took to school and killed and injured innocent children and teachers who'd never done Colt any harm.

It's amazing we all have the ability to focus on what we want and miss what else is clearly there. No criticism, because I often do that myself here.

Everyone: I composed this thread's title myself. The article's title is something completely different. I felt the tale of the article was that the father was at fault, but learning about his life and relationship with his son, I sensed no malicious neglect or indifference on what he was trying to do to reach his son.

But that doesn't absolve him from full responsibility. And I'd say the same had it been me and my own son. My point was to note the entire situation was much more complicated that one of just unquestioned neglect in securing his firearms. Colin was trying to love his imperfect son from his own imperfect life and imperfect decisions.