Utah 6th grader brings gun to school 'for protection' in Sandy Hook aftermath, points it at classm

A Utah sixth-grader brought a gun to school on Monday to defend himself in case a Sandy Hook copycat tried to shoot up his school, authorities said. One girl said the unidentified 11-year-old pointed the pistol at her. "At recess, he pointed a gun to my head and said he was going to kill me,” Isabel Rios, one of the boy’s classmates at West Kearns Elementary School.

The boy told his friends that his parents urged him to bring the unloaded .22 caliber pistol to school for protection following the Sandy Hook school massacre in Newtown, Conn., on Friday.

Edit to add: sorry I forgot the source... www.nydailynews.com...

I am just dumbfounded over this at the moment. There are SO many things wrong with this it is not even funny. Lets assume that the parents did give him the gun(unloaded) for protection in case of a school shooting. First, they broke the law in doing so by giving the child a handgun(loaded or not), second they broke the law by telling him to take it to school. If they didn't give it to him they should be charged with endangering a child for having the gun accessible(loaded or not)

The stupidity of the child to pull it out and threaten another student just blows me away(no pun intended). It was for protection(if indeed he didn't steal it from his parents) and he does exactly what the parents wanted protection from. To top it all off the teachers didn't even find out about it until 3pm. WHAT THE HECK IS THESE CHILDRENS PROBLEM? especially in the wake of what occurred last week a teacher should have been notified right after recess not hours later.

I posted a thread about the possibility of a town being patrolled by swat members to diminish crime earlier HERE asking if this was a practice run before going larger. The gun issue is becoming scary now, especially if parents are actually sending their kids to school with guns for protection. This must stop or we will all be in a heap of trouble.

Edit to add: More sources and video



news.yahoo.com...
on.aol.com...

Edit to Add: I felt this post was important as it shows the child had ammo so I am editing the OP to make sure it is seen. (It is a few posts down on this page.)

Originally posted by tanda7
According to this source he had ammo.
www.dailymail.co.uk...

Police said although the weapon was not loaded the ammunition was inside the boy’s book bag.

Insanity

this is heart wrenching and very sad. The children need to be protected from the media coverage, they are too young to cope with this kind of thing.

Very sad to read this.

According to this source he had ammo.
www.dailymail.co.uk...

Police said although the weapon was not loaded the ammunition was inside the boy’s book bag.

Insanity

reply to post by Agarta


Seems his parents are more of a danger to him than any school shooter absolutely disgusting. adding tto the problem rather than preventing it. just what people need more guns in the wrong hands. very sad. if its true he threatened someone in school he is clearly an idiot and that could have gone so wrong especially if other people had been also carrying for protection and couldnt see he was messing about. aside fom the fact he probably traumatised the other person after what has just happened. i hope people in america can sort out this problem without arming more people. it must be really scary to see stuff like this happening. i hope we never read about a nother horrific mass shooting . perhaps not a realistic hope but we can only hope for the best

I expect this sort of behavior out of Florida. Shame on you Utah. Thats just all sorts of stupid.

I blame the media.

THEY ARE MAKING PEOPLE CRAZY.

If this story is confirmed to have happened as reported then I feel sorry for the entire family.

This is more sad than it is stupid.

It sounds to me like the parents were as desperate as a lot of parents have become in the past week. Things like pulling their kids out of school and such. People feel like they have no safety net. Not giving them an excuse though, so don't misunderstand.

reply to post by unphased

I blame the media.

THEY ARE MAKING PEOPLE CRAZY.

I came across this yesterday.

Roger Ebert "The day after Columbine, I was interviewed for the Tom Brokaw news program. The reporter had been assigned a theory and was seeking sound bites to support it. "Wouldn't you say," she asked, "that killings like this are influenced by violent movies?" No, I said, I wouldn't say that. "But what about 'Basketball Diaries'?" she asked.
"Doesn't that have a scene of a boy walking into a school with a machine gun?" The obscure 1995 Leonardo Di Caprio movie did indeed have a brief fantasy scene of that nature, I said, but the movie failed at the box office (it grossed only $2.5 million), and it's unlikely the Columbine killers saw it.

The reporter looked disappointed, so I offered her my theory. "Events like this," I said, "if they are influenced by anything, are influenced by news programs like your own. When an unbalanced kid walks into a school and starts shooting, it becomes a major media event. Cable news drops ordinary programming and goes around the clock with it. The story is assigned a logo and a theme song; these two kids were packaged as the Trench Coat Mafia. The message is clear to other disturbed kids around the country: If I shoot up my school, I can be famous. The TV will talk about nothing else but me. Experts will try to figure out what I was thinking. The kids and teachers at school will see they shouldn't have messed with me. I'll go out in a blaze of glory."

In short, I said, events like Columbine are influenced far less by violent movies than by CNN, the NBC Nightly News and all the other news media, who glorify the killers in the guise of "explaining" them. I commended the policy at the Sun-Times, where our editor said the paper would no longer feature school killings on Page 1. The reporter thanked me and turned off the camera. Of course the interview was never used. They found plenty of talking heads to condemn violent movies, and everybody was happy."

From rogerebert.com

How convenient all these incidents are to the anti-gun agenda... Sigh!

I feel like i'm in the movie V for Vendetta and we are at the moment where everyone starts wearing their Guy Fawkes mask.

This is sort of related....

My little sister is a senior in high school, and she told me today that there was an e-mail from the administration to the teachers that addressed a rumor that a group of students were planning on bringing guns to school friday because of the 2012 doom theory...not sure if these kids were planning a shoot up, or if they wanted to be prepared to protect themselves from some disaster scenario?

Pretty concerning....the idea that students in school feel the need to bring guns to school for whatever reason.

See, this is the problem; To many irresponsible gun owners out there. If you have guns, keep them in a gun safe, locked! The parents of this kid need to be put in prison, and their gun rights taken away. They should never be allowed to own guns again. Anytime a minor gets a hold of a gun, the parents are responsible for the action committed by that child. Responsible gun owners need to unite and make this the topic. The same thing can be done with a pistol, a .22 rifle, etc.,----that is done with an assault rifle. Lets not be coy here.

Originally posted by Fylgje
See, this is the problem; To many irresponsible gun owners out there. If you have guns, keep them in a gun safe, locked! The parents of this kid need to be put in prison, and their gun rights taken away. They should never be allowed to own guns again. Anytime a minor gets a hold of a gun, the parents are responsible for the action committed by that child. Responsible gun owners need to unite and make this the topic. The same thing can be done with a pistol, a .22 rifle, etc.,----that is done with an assault rifle. Lets not be coy here.

" The same thing can be done with a pistol, a .22 rifle, etc.,----that is done with an assault rifle."

As far as taking a life or mortally wounding, yes.

I am not surprised considering...

Actually, I blame the parents for letting a child take a gun to school!!! Seriously!

If you are that concerned, homeschool, private school, but not this.

I am for gun rights, FOR ADULTS. The media sucks, but they did not put the gun in that kids hand, the parents did.

reply to post by Agarta

I am just dumbfounded over this at the moment. There are SO many things wrong with this it is not even funny.

Don’t be…..for 2 reasons.

1) There are quite a few DUMB parents out there that shouldn’t have children, and

2) This could be another complete load (fabrication) designed for no other reason than to stoke the anti-gun flames Obama and his partners in crime ignited.

reply to post by PatrickGarrow17

there was an e-mail from the administration to the teachers that addressed a rumor that a group of students were planning on bringing guns to school friday because of the 2012 doom theory.

This in my local news;

Investigators arrested 18-year-old Leonard F. Jourdan III Monday night. They said Jourdan made threats to "shoot up" the school and kill a teacher.
Jourdan admitted that he made the remarks because he "believes the world is coming to an end."

www.wdsu.com...

reply to post by Fylgje

It is cheap and easy to lock a gun.
www.guncases.com...
Although I am not a gun enthusiast, I have to admit, the safest place I've ever lived was in a small town in northern AZ, where one out of three people carried guns, even in the bars. Violent crime in this area is almost non-existent.

Instead of entertaining an all or nothing debate, I think integrating locks into the design of all civilian firearms would be an obvious step in the right direction. We have keys for autos specifically to deter unauthorized use.
Why not have the same for guns? Surely the engineers could come up with a way to make a gun inoperable to any one but the owner.

Of course this does not address the issue of Agarta's OP. A parent who puts a firearm into the hands of an eleven year old unsupervised is inexcusable.