Jeffrey Rupnow has now officially told a Wisconsin court that he did nothing wrong, or at least nothing a jury should punish him for. Before we get to that, let’s catch up on how we got here.
On December 16, 2024, 15-year-old Natalie Rupnow walked into Abundant Life Christian School in Madison with two handguns and opened fire in a study hall. Teacher Erin West, 42, and freshman Rubi Vergara, 14, were killed; six others were wounded, and Natalie took her own life before it was over.
The school had no metal detectors and no resource officer, and as I’ve said, until I’m blue in the face, neither one is a magic wand anyway. Within hours the internet’s resident detectives were busy deciding she must be trans because she went by Samantha, a theory so dumb that the Madison police chief had to swat it down at a press conference. Meanwhile, the stuff that actually mattered was sitting in plain sight.
That would be the Columbine fandom, which regular readers know I can’t stop talking about. Natalie wore the same KMFDM shirt Eric Harris once wore. She also left behind a handwritten six-page manifesto that called her parents scum, and she openly worshipped Finnish school shooter Pekka-Eric Auvinen as the “one true ideal of the so-called future.”
She fit squarely into the world the old Columbiners built, back when kids started idolizing Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold the day after Columbine. Over the years that scene morphed into what’s now called the TCC, the so-called True Crime Community, where the obsession spread well beyond Columbine to just about every shooter with a Wikipedia page, and where a lonely teenager can trade edits and in-jokes about mass murderers with people who cheer her on.
Jeffrey Rupnow was arrested on May 8, 2025, and charged with two felony counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor resulting in death, plus one count of contributing to the delinquency of a child. According to the complaint, one of the guns was a Christmas present from him, and the other was partly paid for with Natalie’s own money but bought in his name.
He told her the combination to his gun safe was his Social Security number backward, called it the “fun safe,” let her pack the guns for range trips because he didn’t want to “babysit” her, and handed her a pistol to clean the day before the shooting without remembering whether he locked it back up. That’s your textbook ‘responsible gun owner™,’ a man who told police his only mistake was teaching his daughter how to handle guns.
Earlier this year his lawyers tried to get the whole case tossed, arguing among other things that he only gave her a “clue” to the safe combination and that prosecuting him violated the Second Amendment. The judge denied the motion and sent the case on toward trial.
That brings us to this past Tuesday, when Dane County Judge Ellen Berz entered not guilty pleas on Jeffrey Rupnow’s behalf on all three counts. Rupnow, now 44, stood silent while it happened. A pretrial conference is set for November 11, and the trial is scheduled for March, with jury selection expected to begin March 8 and at least one outlet reporting a March 9 start. If he’s convicted on every count, he faces a maximum of 18 years in prison.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. When you hand a troubled kid a gun and then shrug, you’re part of the story.
(Sources)
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