Gun abuse in the US: When children take up arms

A six-year-old shoots at a teacher, a teenager kills an eleven-year-old – in the USA about 100 people are shot by children every year. Parents are mainly to blame for not securing their gun stocks.

“That shot was not accidental, it was intentional,” said Newport News Virginia Police Chief Steve Drew. The shooter: a six-year-old boy. He seriously injured his teacher with a pistol.

She has now been released from the hospital. The teacher was teaching when the six-year-old drew the gun, pointed it at her and fired, the police chief said. The pistol belonged to the first-grader’s mother, legally acquired.

Unaccompanied for the first time at school

The boy’s family has now spoken out for the first time. Through her lawyer, she announced that the six-year-old had an acute disability. His mother or father accompanied him to school every day. The week he shot was the first time he was not accompanied to class by a parent.

“We will regret our absence on this day for the rest of our lives,” the family said in the statement. The boy is currently being held in a medical facility. How to proceed is unclear. And also what consequences the shot could have for the mother.

Children and young people are more likely to get their hands on guns

It’s rare for a six-year-old to deliberately shoot another person in the United States – but not for children and young people to get their hands on weapons. Just a few days ago, a 14-year-old shot and killed an 11-year-old boy in a parking lot in Dallas. After an argument, the girl apparently shot another girl, fatally hitting the eleven-year-old.

His mother tearfully addressed the public with an appeal: “As adults, we have to talk to our children and teach them that violence is not the answer.”

A six-year-old shooting his teacher, a 14-year-old shooting an eleven-year-old. And a video has been circulating online of a toddler waving a gun around a gated community in Phoenix.

Many households with weapons stored insecurely

It’s obvious: a lot of gun owners, a lot of parents, don’t keep their guns safe. According to a study by Harvard and North Eastern Universities, around 4.6 million children in the United States live in a household with a loaded gun that is not securely stored.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said on local PBS television, “If you talk to cops who’ve been on the job for 20, 25 years, they say, ‘It used to be very unusual for a kid to get hold of a gun – now it’s routine.”

More than 100 deaths a year at the hands of children

There are states in the United States that have laws that require guns to be kept out of the reach of children. But that is not the case in all. Josh Sugarmann of the Violence Policy Center, an organization that campaigns for gun control, told PBS that unfortunately there is no federal law governing gun storage or that children are not allowed access.

This often leads to unintentional shots from children’s hands. According to the organization Everytown For Gun Safety, there were at least 301 accidental gunshots by children last year. More than one in three was fatal.