Colin Gray, the father of 14-year-old Georgia school shooting suspect Colt Gray, appeared in court and learned he could spend the rest of his life behind bars if convicted.

The father of the 14-year-old Apalachee High School shooting suspect faces two counts of second-degree murder in connection with this week’s Georgia attack that left four dead – charges that push the legal limits of parental responsibility for a child’s alleged gun crime.

The case against Colin Gray, 54, marks just the second time in America a parent has been charged in connection with a mass shooting by a minor, former federal prosecutor Jeffrey Toobin said. The charges – including four counts of involuntary manslaughter and eight counts of cruelty to children, with more possible – are the most severe ever filed against an alleged school shooter’s parent.

Each count against Gray accuses the father of “providing a firearm to Colt Gray with knowledge he was a threat to himself and others,” his Barrow County arrest warrant affidavit shows. Colin Gray has not entered any plea; Colt Gray has not entered pleas to four felony murder charges, and more charges against him are expected.

“The key issue in the case against the father here will be: recklessness, foreseeability, how he handled the gun in relation to his son,” Toobin told CNN on Thursday night.

Colin Gray could face up to 180 years in prison if convicted on all counts, state Judge Currie Mingledorff said during a Friday hearing.

Central to the case against Gray will be an interaction the father and his son had with law enforcement more than a year before Wednesday’s mass shooting; the teenager’s access to the weapon used in the attack; and what the father knew about the boy’s mental state, experts told CNN, as a portrait of the teenager’s tumultuous family life emerges.

In May 2023, law enforcement questioned Colt and his father about online threats “to commit a school shooting,” the FBI has said. Colt at the time denied making the threats, and his father told authorities his son did not have unsupervised access to hunting guns in the house.

Just seven months later, the suspect’s father purchased the firearm allegedly used in the mass shooting as a holiday present for his son, two law enforcement sources told CNN. The AR-15-style rifle was bought at a local gun store as a Christmas present, one source said.

The charges against Gray come just five months after the parents of the teenager who killed four students in a 2021 school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, were each sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison after their convictions of involuntary manslaughter.

James and Jennifer Crumbley were the first parents to be held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by their child as the nation continues to grapple with the scourge of gunfire on campus and mass shootings in places usually considered safe.

Already, there are striking similarities between the Georgia and Michigan cases: In each shooting, four people were killed and others wounded at school after a teenager’s parents gave them the deadly weapon as a gift.

The case against Gray also echoes the Crumbleys’ in that all involve “a gun being allowed in the hands of a child,” CNN legal analyst and criminal defense attorney Joey Jackson said Thursday.

“What that Michigan case did is that they put the world and the country on notice that as parents, if you are in possession of a firearm, that you are responsible for the actions of your son,” former New York prosecutor and criminal defense attorney Bernarda Villalona told CNN.

“You have to be aware of what is the capability of your son, what they’re going through, what access they have to these firearms that are capable of causing death.”

Despite similarities between the Michigan and Georgia cases, some key differences also are in play. And with the Georgia investigation still in its early stages, experts said it’s too early to tell exactly how a criminal trial of Gray might unfold and compare with the Crumbleys’.

The second-degree murder charges apply to the two 14-year-olds killed Wednesday, Christian Angulo and Mason Schermerhorn, but not to the two slain teachers, Richard Aspinwall and Cristina Irimie, the Barrow County district attorney said Friday.

“Second-degree murder is different in Georgia than in other states. It’s a rather new charge, and it is specifically geared towards cruelty to children in the second degree,” prosecutor Brad Smith said.

“If you commit cruelty to children in the second degree that causes death, that is second-degree murder.”

“I’m not trying to send a message,” Smith added of the charges against Gray. “I’m just trying to use the tools in my arsenal to prosecute people for the crimes they commit.”

During the Crumbley trials, prosecutors argued the parents were “grossly negligent” in allowing their teenage son, Ethan Crumbley, to have access to the gun he used and ignoring signs of his spiraling mental health.

Like the Crumbley trials, a trial in Gray’s case likely would probe whether the Georgia shooting was reasonably foreseeable and if the father acted recklessly and with negligence, CNN’s experts said.

And it would be hard to argue Gray was unaware of safety concerns regarding his son, given the questions he faced from law enforcement in May 2023 – over a year before the shooting – said Karen McDonald, who prosecuted Ethan and his parents.