Parents Downplay Plot While Son Builds 3D-Printed Arsenal

This is a follow-up to my previous blog post about the 13-year-old in Pierce County, Washington, who was arrested after deputies said he was planning a school shooting.

He has now pleaded not guilty to five counts, including four felonies, after deputies say he wasn’t just talking about violence but preparing for it. Investigators say community tips led them to his social media posts, where he bragged about guns and made threats to kill. By early Saturday morning, he was in custody, and deputies were hauling out what they described as a stockpile of weapons.

That ‘stockpile’ wasn’t a handful of dusty hunting rifles. Authorities say they confiscated 23 firearms, most of them homemade on a 3D printer. Think about that for a moment. While his parents insist the whole thing is a misunderstanding, their son was in their house building murder Legos. These weren’t toys. They were functional guns, printed, assembled, and stored under the same roof where the adults claim nothing dangerous was happening.

Police noted that about 20 percent of the firearms were unsecured, but let’s not lose the bigger picture. This wasn’t just about access. This was about intent. Alongside the weapons were loaded magazines with “school shooter” written across them, along with clothes and writings describing a typical mass shooting scenario. Deputies compared the evidence to past mass school shootings and said every box was checked.

Authorities also said there was no specific target identified. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. He hasn’t attended school since 2021, when he was nine years old. Four years outside any structured education. Four years where no teacher, counselor, or administrator could intervene. Four years where the only curriculum appears to have been YouTube, gun culture, and 3D-printing instructions.

And yet, outside the courtroom, his parents brushed it all off. His mother claimed the posts were just him trying to be cool among peers. His father called the charges overblown, saying the boy had no intention of harming anyone. This is exactly the kind of denial and neglect that allows school shootings to happen. The signs are written on the walls, scribbled on the magazines, and printed into the plastic of guns that never should have existed. Pretending it’s all harmless posturing doesn’t just miss the point; it creates the environment where a child grows into a would-be killer.

This isn’t a misunderstanding. This is a 13-year-old who stockpiled 23 firearms, many of them 3D printed, with writings about committing mass murder, who hasn’t been in school for four years, and whose parents are still waving it off as no big deal. If Pierce County deputies hadn’t acted when they did, we might already be counting victims. Instead, we’re left with the hard questions about parenting, oversight, and what happens when a child is left to build his own arsenal in the shadows.

(Sources)