Highland Park shooter’s dad says son raised with ‘good morals’, doesn’t regret helping him get a gun

Robert Crimo Jr., the father of the suspected Highland Park shooter, told a Chicago news station on Thursday that his son was raised with “good morals” and that he still has no regrets about sponsoring his son’s Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card.

He doubled down on having no regrets despite his son having used the FOID card to purchase the weapons that were used in Monday’s mass shooting. All that Crimo Jr. did express was shock because to hear him tell it, his son had been raised to be a good boy.

Crimo Jr. “described the entire situation as a nightmare, saying the family is just as shocked because he believes his son was raised with good morals. He also said he doesn’t regret helping his son get a FOID card because he was following the law,” according to Chicago station WLS.

“Like, that’s all it was … a consent form to allow my son to go through the process. They do background checks. Whatever that entails, I’m not exactly sure. And either you’re approved or denied. And he was approved and prior, right before 2021,” he said.

As previously reported, in a separate interview with the New York Post that was published a day earlier, Crimo Jr. defended his decision to sponsor his son’s FOID.

“He bought everything on his own, and they’re registered to him. You know, he drove there, he ordered them, he picked them up, they did his background check on each one,” he said.

“They make me like I groomed him to do all this. I’ve been here my whole life, and I’m gonna stay here, hold my head up high, because I didn’t do anything wrong,” he added.

To legally possess firearms or ammunition in the state of Illinois, residents “must have a Firearm Owners Identification (FOID) card, which is issued by the Illinois State Police to any qualified applicant,” according to state police’s Firearms Services Bureau.

The Washington Post notes that when Crimo Jr.’s son, Robert Crimo III, applied for a FOID card in December of 2019, he “was under 21 at the time.”

This meant that state law “required him to have the consent of a parent or guardian before he could own a firearm or ammunition.”

“According to state police, which issues the cards, Crimo’s father sponsored the permit application,” the Post notes.

Crimo Jr. did so despite the police having been summoned to the family’s home twice earlier that year because of his son’s behavior.

Learn more below:

The Illinois State Police are now investigating Crimo Jr. as per his alleged “culpability” vis-a-vis signing the consent form that had allowed his son to obtain a FOID card.

Continuing his remarks to station WLS, Crimo Jr. admitted to being at a complete loss as to the motivation behind his son’s alleged actions.

“That’s what I’d like to ask him when I see him. I mean there, this kind of definitive act is a senseless act of violence. There’s no need for it,” he said.

He also gave more insight into what he’d spoken with his son about the night before the shooting.

“Thirteen hours earlier, I spent almost an hour with them sitting in the yard talking about the planet, the atmosphere and nothing. Great mood. I’m just shocked. I think, three days before the fourth, my wife had asked him, ‘hey, do you have any plans for the fourth?’ And he simply said, ‘no.,'” Crimo Jr. said.

In the interview with the Post, he said that he’d also spoken with his son about a mass shooting in Denmark that had occurred earlier that day: “He goes, ‘Yeah, that guy is an idiot.’ That’s what he said! ‘People like that … [commit mass shootings] to amp up the people that want to ban all guns.’”

Concluding his remarks to WLS, Crimo Jr. claimed he hasn’t stopped thinking about the victims of Monday’s mass shooting.

“My heart goes out to them. I just, I can only imagine losing a family member at a parade or a child that doesn’t have their parents? It’s horrific,” he said.

One of the surviving victims, 2-year-old Aiden McCarthy, lost both of his parents.

Crimo Jr. also reportedly denied rumors that his son had lived in an abusive household.

Last but not least, he once again dismissed everybody’s concerns about his son’s troubling past behavior, including his social media presence.

“He also wasn’t concerned by the social media posts his son made in the past, saying he hadn’t seen them all and figured they had to do with his music,” according to WLS.

Everybody else has said the opposite, including the young man’s former classmates.

“Some people had a feeling. If you look at his YouTube and his Instagram, it foreshadowed this happening in a way. My friends and I were looking at it before they took (the accounts) down. … He had pictures that he drew on his YouTube of getting shot by the police and shooting at people,” one classmate told the Lake County News-Sun.

Vivek Saxena

Comment

We have no tolerance for comments containing violence, racism, profanity, vulgarity, doxing, or discourteous behavior. If a comment is spam, instead of replying to it please click the ∨ icon below and to the right of that comment. Thank you for partnering with us to maintain fruitful conversation.

Latest Articles