In the US where guns are easily available, it is not unusual for young children to shoot someone. This usually happens because an adult has carelessly left a gun lying around where a child has got hold got it and accidentally fired it.
But in Newport News, there was an alarming report that a six-year old had deliberately shot a teacher in their elementary school.
The superintendent of the public school district in Newport News, Virginia, has called for increased gun control while condemning a shooting in which a first-grade student deliberately shot his teacher.
In a news conference, the superintendent George Parker said he was “disheartened” and “in shock” after the attack left a Richneck elementary school teacher with “life-threatening injuries”.
…The teacher identified as Zwerner was shot in a classroom and was said to have “some improvement” as of Friday afternoon, the Newport News police chief, Steve Drew, told reporters.
Police arrested the six-year-old boy accused of shooting his teacher.
…Under Virginia law, six-year-olds cannot be tried as adults, the Associated Press reported. They are also considered too young to be committed to the juvenile justice department’s custody if they are found guilty of any criminal charges against them.
Nevertheless, a juvenile judge is able to strip away custody from a parent of such a child and place that child under the care of the state social services department.
If the report checks out, this shows an alarming level of premeditation for a young child: to take a gun to school undetected and then fire it at the teacher.
“this shows an alarming level of premeditation for a young child: to take a gun to school undetected ”
Nobody expects a 6 year old to bring a gun to class, let alone them thinking (premeditating) about it being detected! (Okay, I’m not US, so I’m really just hoping this is so… someone please tell me this is so!) So I cannot imagine this is premeditated — this would involve said 6-yo planning to bring a gun to school, realising this was not allowed ,and thinking of ways to work around it being found out so they could use the gun… That’s not how 6-year-old’s do things!
Instead, I’d say it shows an incredible amount of incompetence on the part of the parents. (Which should have been compensated by competent lawmakers making gun laws the would make such unfortunate events near impossible… for example by banning guns!)
I read this story earlier and I couldn’t believe there wasn’t even a mention of the parents. I feel there is a pretty solid case for charging the parents with attempted manslaughter. Not only does it appear they mishandled a gun by leaving it loaded where a six year old could gain possession of it, it also appears they fostered a culture where shooting someone seems a reasonable path of conflict resolution.
I grew up in Arizona in the ’60s. I and every boy I knew had toy guns. A lot of kids went hunting with their dads. We watched TV shows where cowboys had gunfights, soldiers fought battles with guns, and spies shot each other with guns, yet I never had a single thought even in fantasy to shoot anybody and I never heard anyone else say they had such a fantasy. This child was raised by hardcore criminals, in my opinion, and they should be locked up for many years.
I wonder if the reason we’ve heard nothing about the parents is that they’re members of the armed gang that runs the US, i. e. police officers? It would explain the lax gun discipline.
Gun culture for availability. Popular media reflects that.
Maybe a touch of precociousness, too.
What else do you expect from a society that values the right to kill more than the right not to get killed?
Incidentally, there is no such thing as “attempted manslaughter”. Manslaughter is defined as unintentionally killing a person whilst attempting to harm them in a less-final manner.
I feel like the 6 year old hiding the gun makes sense. Children very quickly learn not to tell adults everything so they’ll hide the things they don’t want to get taken away from them. What doesn’t make sense is the idea of a 6 year old having hardcore thoughts of murder. I wonder if they have an unusual mental condition that changes how they perceive the world. Or if they just got their head stuffed full of enough bullshit along the way that they expected some very different outcome.
@6:
Indeed, so why would you imagine they would? Perhaps, being 6 years old, they had no conception of what a serious act shooting someone is, or even of what mortality is, and didn’t consider it any more deeply than “she was mean to me today, I’m going to be mean back tomorrow.”
Were is the parents? They should be liable, he is miner. Why the media and politician covering it up? We as citizen need to be informed to the fullest extend. This what happen when governments no longer allowing parents to raised there children.