Nicole Johnson is horrified by the shooting of an 8 year-old child by her classmate and has some important questions for our readers.
Currently, ABC News.com is leading with this headline: Seattle Boy Who Accidentally Shot Third-Grade Classmate Charged, Judge to Decide Whether Case Proceeds about the third-grade boy who brought a gun to school and shot his classmate, Amina Bowman, 8, by accident. Bowman is in critical condition, but expected to recover.
I firmly believe our community has the ability to cause a shift in individual consciousness, as well as the capability to heighten social awareness around pressing issues within our culture. I want to open this discussion up to our esteemed writers and commenters at The Good Men Project.
Here are my questions for you pertaining to this case:
- Why was this 9-year-old boy able to locate a gun in his mother’s home?
- If the .45-caliber handgun was locked, why does this 9-year-old boy know how to unlock a gun?
- If the gun was not locked or properly stored, what criminal penalties should his mother face? (Keep in mind, the state of Washington does not have a firearm child access prevention law.)
- 27 states have passed firearm child access prevention laws, which hold the gun owner responsible if a child gains access to a gun that is not securely stored. Should the penalties for this law be more stringent?
- The charging documents state the boy had told a classmate that he was going to bring his “dad’s gun” to school and run away. Why didn’t his classmate warn his teacher or school administrators?
- Does this 9-year-old boy know what he did was horribly wrong?
- Should this 9-year-old boy serve time in juvenile detention?
- What is the best way to prevent cases like this in the future?
About Nicole Johnson
wrt firerm access prevention laws. Chances are that a moron–based on first reports–like the one who owned the gun never heard of them, wouldn’t care if he did, and you don’t know the law’s broken until somebody’s dead.
He was able to locate the gun because he knew where it was. Adults didn’t keep it hidden from him.
There are NRA-sponsored classes for even young children about guns which, among other things, teaches kids what to do if some other kid talks about having or bringing a gun. Since the NRA is icky, it’s hard to get such classes to a lot of kids, especially if somebody suggested it for public schools. Especially in Seattle.
I expect the kid knows something catastrophic happened, and might even think he did it. I know kids younger than nine who can make such connections. Whether we can expect him to feel adult-level remorse is another issue.
I think he should be in juvie, or in some other situation that keeps him away from other kids. He has demonstrated that he has a one-in-a-million propensity to do this, and his home situation has demonstrated that they have no clue and there is no reason to think they won’t have unsupervised guns around again, out of cussedness or ignorance.
Best, but not perfect, way to prevent this from happening again is universal gun familiarity. You don’t have to own a gun, but it would be useful as hell to know what one is and what it can do and how to stop such situations before they go sour.
I work with troubled teens in a residential setting. Several start using drugs and gang banging before they reach the age of 10. And one of my guys (now a teen) started using drugs with his mom at the age of 7. Perhaps to many, this is shocking. Not in my world. I have two 14 year olds on my unit now that started selling drugs AND using 4 – 5 years ago.
The kid DID know what it was used for. Murder, no but it’s time that parents be held accountable for the crap they’re doing to these kids. Mom’s boyfriends gun? Ladies, ya wanna have custody of these kids, then BE THE MOTHERS you’re supposed to be. How about child endangerment. Of course the kid lives with the mom but note in the article dad’s criminal record is more then likely going to be looked into as well. How about the jerk boyfriend?
It’s really important to know the facts on this case. They seem to differ.
The newspaper report I read said the gun went off while stowed in the boy’s backpack. This is a LOT different than shooting someone point blank. If he was going to run away – I hadn’t read that – I cab understand why:
History of the boy includes:
Age 2.5, boy was found with some of mom’s meth materials/syringes.
Age 3.5, boy was taken from mom bc she was found guilty of forging stolen checks.
Age 5 boy is taken from DAD bc dad goes to jail for assaulting the boy’s mom and violated protection order. Boy is then adopted by paternal grandparents. Grandma dies of cancer.
Boy goes back to visitation with mom while living with dad and surviving grandpa (who is unemployed).
This boy has had horrible circumstances to be dealing with at his age. Heartbreaking story all around.
Sounds a lot like this boy would have had a chance if he was left with his father. But his criminal drug addict mother used the feminist tools of male oppression to fabricate a false DV charge in order to re-gain custody (which she clearly did not deserve).
Feminism caused this tragedy.
She’s not the child’s legal guardian, as is stated in the article. Also, signs so far suggest that NO ONE in that kid’s life is doing a very good job of keeping him safe.
No prison for kids.
Be interesting to know how a gun went off while in a backpack, if that’s the case. It had to be loaded, a round in the chamber, cocked, and the safety(ies) off. The note that it was a forty-five means it might be the famous Colt 1911, which the US military used and loved until it was replaced, for reasons of NATO ammo interchangeability, by the 9mm, aka “poodleshooter”. That weapon has a number of safeties, which need not be described here, but it cannot fire by accident. You have to be squeezing the grip in the normal position of the trigger will not work.
Few guns, except double action revolvers loaded and cocked, will go off without being touched. Not many criminals use wheel guns any longer. A conundrum
There have been a couple of such cases in Michigan in the last few years and the inevitable factor is the horrid home life, its criminal components, and the complete invulnerability of the adults in the situation to social strictures. No shame. No common sense. No fear of law enforcement. This kid would not have been a charmer for adoption, either, so Child Abductive Services usually go after somebody whose situation is a lot easier on the eye.
Anthony. You would not be averse to some kind of confinement for the protection of the rest of us, right? Okay, so nine-year-olds don’t go to prison. We already knew that. Where do kids like this go?
A nine year old needs more protection than you or I do. That is the only response I have for you.
Anthony. Are you referring to his critically-injured classmate? Apparently she didn’t have the protection she needed.
I will note that a .45 is designed to kill adults, so how much protection is sufficient for him versus us is not particularly relevant.
But let’s put it another way. I have a granddaughter who is four and a half and one who is three and a half months. Do they need protection from this kid?
In my musings on guns, I hoped to make the point that the story that this thing went off in a back pack by accident is unlikely. Among other things, to be that sensitive means that the act of putting it in the backpack is enormously hazardous. It should have gone off before he got it into the pack.
It appears that this kid is ruined, damaged, and hopeless. Until he gets fixed, what do we do about him, and my granddaughters? That he started his career about the time he got out of diapers, presuming his mother put him in diapers in the first place, doesn’t mean considering his future is out of bounds.
Mr. Aubrey,
How can you judge that this young child is ruined, damaged and hopeless? There is nothing in any of the articles I have read that indicate this child had any previous behavioral problems or that his intention was to cause harm to anyone. From all accounts this was a tragic mistake. Do we now compound that mistake and finish destroying this little boy? We have fostered a society that allows terrible people to have children just because they can and we protect those parents rights every step of the way while closing our eyes to the damage being inflicted on the child. And when a child with that background does something we declare it inevitable. Let’s recognize it for what it is – a tragic mistake that was preventable if we had protected this child as we should have. This boy should not be permanently ruined by this, and God willing the little girl that was shot will recover completely as well. I say we pray for both and quit postulating about what a criminal this 9 year old is because he had the misfortune to be born into a family in decay.
Voleka.
You’ll note this kid’s history isn’t clean. His home background is unspeakable. He shot a classmate. These are three major ways in which he differs from other kids, two about behavior and one about behavioral predictors.
I’m not against trying to fix him. I’m against letting him run around other kids without being fixed, or at least examined for violent propensities.
I have, as I say, several granddaughters.
Most states expunge juvie records at age eighteen and so, in addition with the state wanting to cover its ass, you won’t find much info on young adult criminals’ juvie background. Hard to imagine somebody decides to switch from being the potential president of the Student Council to a gangbanger on his eighteenth birthday. But that’s the implication.
As I mentioned earlier, given what I know about guns, I want to know about the thing accidentally going off in his backpack. I have doubts.
That said, this is a kid who put a loaded, cocked, unsafed gun in his backpack to take to school. That puts him in a small category from which bad things can be expected, based on the history of such kids.
And I have several granddaughters.