Just Another Little Gun Incident

A six-year-old African-American boy has shot Abigail Zwerner, a teacher at Richneck Elementary School, with a hand gun in the town of Newport News in the US state of Virginia last Friday ......

.... in what police confirmed was not "an accidental shooting", while the teacher was giving a lesson. There was no confrontation between the boy and teacher who was left with life-threatening injuries but who bravely escorted all of her other students out of the classroom after she was shot.

The school has around 550 students and has metal detection facilities, but with the children checked at random, rather than every child being inspected every day.

Now how shocking is this story?

• Firstly: A six year old had got a gun, presumably from its feckless parent(s).
• Secondly: The child was prepared to take the gun to school, and then use it on a teacher or fellow school child.
• Thirdly: They regularly have to scan children of that age at the school for weapons.
• And lastly: That all this is accepted as being the price to pay for some people to be able to have guns.

The boy's backpack was searched by a teacher after a report that he had a gun, but no weapon was found, according to Richneck Elementary school superintendent George Parker ... the boy had apparently hidden his mothers hand gun.

Apparently this type of incident is "extremely rare", although not unheard of. For instance in 2000, a 6-year-old boy from a druggie family, fired a bullet from a .32-caliber gun inside Buell Elementary near Flint, Michigan, 60 miles (96 kilometres) from Detroit, striking 6-year-old Kayla Rolland in the right shoulder, before the bullet tearing through her chest, striking major organs, according to press articles from the time.

Kayla "Kay Kay" Rolland

Sadly she died a half-hour later. Since 1970, at least 18 school shootings were perpetrated by children aged under 9, according to the independent K-12 School Shooting Database.

No doubt the Republican backwoodsmen who support Donald Trump will claim that this shooting is actually the schools fault, as they should actually screen all 500 plus children for guns and knives every time they enter school property.

Sadly I am no longer shocked or surprised that US citizens accept this sort of incident as 'normal' and indeed that they are still on the rise. In the decade since the Sandy Hook killings, research compiled by the K-12 School Shooting Database research group, says that there have been 189 shootings at schools around the US that have resulted in at least one fatality.

Deadliest School Shootings

Seventeen of these were classified as "active shooter situations" i.e. someone actively targeted or randomly shot at others in the school. In all 279 have died from being shot on a school property during, before or after school hours, including weekends since Sandy Hook.

Mayor Phillip Jones said "This is a dark day in our history and I think this is a red flag for the country."

But it appears that nothing will shock the US lawmakers into action to seriously curb gun ownership. Lets hope that the wounded school teacher in this incident makes a full recovery ... latest reports say she is showing signs of improvement, and is able to talk to friends and family.

Final Update: Deja Taylor, 26, the mother of the six year old boy, is now facing multiple State and Federal charges relating to the incident, including illegally using drugs while in possession of a handgun, and making a false statement while buying the gun. She has also been charged with with child neglect and endangerment. The boy, has not been charged

Ms Zwerner, was struck in the hand and upper chest by the bullet, and had to spend two weeks in hospital and undergo surgery four times, but has now somewhat recovered. She still has bullet fragments lodged in her chest above her heart and scars in her hand and chest. She managed to escort the other children to safety, before making her way to the school's administration office to call for help for herself. She fainted in the office doorway.

The demographics of Richneck Elementary school are: 45% of students are Black, 26% of students are White, 15% of students are Hispanic, the rest are of mixed or other races.