The January 10 events of Newport News, Virginia represent a combination with which the United States is sadly familiar: schools and gun violence. The Friday incident is an increasingly popular tragedy where a young child pulls the trigger, and is potentially symptomatic of risky gun ownership habits.
During a lesson in a first-grade classroom at Richneck Elementary School, a six-year old student fired one shot at his teacher, 25-year-old Abigail ‘Abby’ Zwerner, leaving her with a bullet in her chest from the handgun that the student had brought from home in what the Newport News police chief described as an "intentional" shooting. Zwerner, reportedly in a stable condition, was hailed a hero after she effectively led the rest of her students to safety in a different classroom while a colleague restrained the six-year-old. The boy was eventually taken to a medical facility.
Nearly 22 years ago, a similar incident occurred in Michigan; a six-year-old boy shot and killed a classmate with a handgun. That student was never charged as he was considered too young to form criminal intent, but adults living in the house where the boy had found the weapon in a Puma shoebox did face prosecution.
Under Virginia law, the Richneck Elementary student is too young to be tried as an adult or to receive a juvenile prison sentence and it is quite unlikely that he will be charged in juvenile court. However, state law prohibits that loaded firearms be accessible to children and could potentially be used to charge the parents, like in the Michigan case, even though Virginia does not have strict gun storage laws.
In the aftermath of the shooting, parents of other students at the school were upset to learn that although an administrator had been warned of a potential weapon in the boy’s possession, no firearm had been discovered during a search several hours before the incident. The school district responded to other safety concerns by deciding to implement metal detectors in all of their schools, but recognized that these would not tackle the behavioral issues associated with school shootings. How the child acquired the gun, legally owned by his mother, will be an important question in the case.
While the motive of the January 10 shooting remains unclear, the event provides a harsh reminder of the responsibility required of gun owners. Some 7% of US children live with access to loaded, unlocked firearms and firearm discharge is among the top 10 leading causes of death by unintentional injury for children under the age of 10 (general firearm deaths remain the leading cause of death for children and adolescents). Risk of accidental firearm death for US children is much greater than for those of comparable countries and between 2005 and 2012, an estimated 110 unintentional firearm deaths occurred annually among US children aged 0 to 14.
Virginia lawmakers are now pushing for gun safety, including a storage law which would require firearms to be stored locked and unloaded, ammunition to be stored separately, and keys to be inaccessible to children between 0 and 17. Gun-rights advocates suggest that this is a “one-size fits all” approach that would be unfair to families who responsibly train their children in firearm safety while proponents of the law emphasize their goal of safety for children, supported statistically by the lower risk of accidental shootings for children in states with safe storage laws.
Regardless of the declared intentionality of the Richneck Elementary incident, the child would have been unlikely to obtain access to the weapon had the gun been stored according to the safety standards outlined in the proposed legislation. And although educational campaigns and laws can encourage safe firearm storage, the responsibility is ultimately left to the gun owner, leading to the tired question: How do we ensure responsible gun ownership?
The Student Movement is the official student newspaper of Andrews University. Opinions expressed in the Student Movement are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors, Andrews University or the Seventh-day Adventist church.