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Subscribe to RSSA Utah boy claimed he brought a gun to school for protection after the Connecticut massacre, but his classmates say he threatened them. KSL's Andrew Wittenberg reports.
A sixth-grade student in Utah is in police custody after he was accused of bringing a gun to school Monday, reportedly claiming he wanted to protect himself in the event of a school shooting.
The 11-year-old is a student at West Kearns Elementary School, in Kearns, Utah, a suburb of Salt Lake City, and brought the .22-caliber handgun to school in his backpack, Granite School District spokesman Ben Horsley told NBC News.
The boy, whose name has not been released because he is a juvenile, indicated that he wanted to defend himself if there was an incident similar to what happened in Newtown, Conn. Last Friday, 20 students, ages 6 and 7, and six school staff members at Sandy Hook Elementary School were killed when a gunman burst into the school and opened fire before fatally shooting himself. The gunman had killed his mother earlier that day.
“Obviously that’s not the correct approach,” Horlsey said of the 11-year-old's action. “We teach these kids on a regular basis that they have a responsibility to keep their school safe.”
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Some witnesses have said they saw the boy brandish the gun on the playground and point it at another child's head. Other reports said the boy verbally threatened another student with the gun. Police have not yet been able to confirm these accounts, Horsley said, noting that it's sometimes difficult to sort out the facts when all the witnesses are children.
Horsley said two of the boy's classmates complained to a teacher at about 3 p.m. MST, about 45 minutes before the end of the school day. The teacher immediately secured the boy and took him to the principal's office. It was the principal who retrieved the boy's backpack from his classroom and contacted Granite School District police. Police were able to find the weapon and secured the situation in three to five minutes, Horsley said.
The boy also had ammunition, although the gun was not loaded and it was not immediately clear whether the bullets were the appropriate ammunition for the gun, Horsley said.
The student was charged with one count of possession of a dangerous weapon on school property and three charges of aggravated assault, which is a third-degree felony, involving the alleged waving of the weapon at other students in a threatening manner.
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Horsley said the student obtained the gun at home from an extended family member who moved out of the family’s house last week.
Previous reports indicated that the student claimed his parents told him to bring the gun to school for protection. Horsley said those claims are not accurate and said the parents have been "very cooperative.”
Horsley said the student is likely to face severe criminal penalties, adding that he was suspended from the school and will not be let back into the traditional school setting ever. “We have a variety of alternative placements for kids who violate school safety policies,” Horsley said.
No one was injured in the incident, and the school was not placed on lockdown, school administrators said, because the situation was resolved immediately, and, more importantly, they feared startling students.
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Find the gun owner, find out how in the world an 11 year old got it. Take the gun owners "right to bear arms" away for life ( just like you lose a drivers licence when you are a danger on the road) jail him, or put him in mandatory firearms safety classes, make him do some community service, fine him so heavy, he'll be broke for years. Just punish the sheet outta him.
If we need to start somewhere, lets at least get strict on existing gun laws. Maybe enact a few new ones, like if you let a child, or unregistered, unlicenesed person have access to your gun, you go straight to jail.
Someone in that house, is the exact opposite of what a responsible gun owner should be. Negligent, and criminal, are words I'd use.
Unfortunately they don't address the 'storage' aspect anywhere put in the "Tips" section.
Enough, half those points sound like they apply only to 15 year olds. Who the hell wrote that?
It's from the Utah firearms laws webpage. Since this happened in Utah, I thought it would be pertinent.
Not condoning this and he is not anywhere near old enough to have been able to get his hands on the weapon which is on the parents and/or whoever he got it from. But as the school stated “We teach these kids on a regular basis that they have a responsibility to keep their school safe.” Which he apparently took to heart and was actually trying to do.
I guess the NRA got their Christmas wish, which was for everyone in America to have a gun.
.............
I read a lot of posts where folks throw the word NRA around like they know everything about the group. I am not a member, nor do I want to be. I wonder if most members know that the NRAs main purpose is to promote the corporate interests of gun manufacturers. It seems that members think the NRA is about them, you know Joe America and his 30/30 hunting rifle.. Its really not. The HUGE money they get from the gun manufacturers is what drives them. The members dues pay lobbyists to promote gun manufacturers profits. The NRA is doing nothing wrong by advocating more gun sales. Special interests is just what it is. Ford wants to sell cars. Gun makers want to sell guns. Its all about sales and profits, its not really about your second ammendment rights. Its about preserving those rights, to sell more guns.. MONEY!!! GUNS ARE MONEY...
Shawn, - what these anti-NRA folks probably don't understand is that there are about 80 million gun owners in the US. There are about 4.3 million NRA members. 95% of the gun owners out there are going "Who the f* cares what the NRA thinks?"
There are some people who would actually be proud of this kid, believe it or not. I seriously doubt an 11 year old has the strength to control even a .22 caliber gun, odds are he'd fire, hit someone other than the intended target and the gun would smash his face.
I was younger than 11 when I started learning to control and shoot a .357 magnum and shotguns as well as a .22. If he was taught then he could control it but he still had no business having access to it without supervision and it should have been secured so he could not have obtained it. I know people that started hunting prior to the age of 11. But then again if he was taught properly he would have never been waving it around and pointing it at people
And there are still morons who think gun control laws dont need an upgrade.... unbelievable...
Glad to hear nobody got hurt.
Your words and your screen name don't match. Just an observation.
Why because she/he doesn't agree with you? That is pretty lame.
Why because I believe the public has as much right to be free of gun violence, as gun lovers have of owning a weapon? Because I think its fair that the rest of society DEMAND gun owners be made responsible. And held accountable when they cause harm to others, or put people in danger, through their negligence?
Gun owners arent the only people whos rights matter, or whos freedom needs to be protected.
You say "And there are still morons who think gun control laws dont need an upgrade".
In this incident the gun was stolen. And in the Sandy Hook shooting, all the guns were stolen. How will "upgrading" gun control laws prevent these types of incidents in the future?
Gun-happy Utah, where else?
Our laws, along with those of Arizona, are so lax that it's surprising we don't have shootings all the time.
Oh, wait, we do.
...and before you pro-gun folks argue that more guns stop crime, remember the Tucson shootings where the men who actually were carrying guns, were among the last to respond -- and they did not use their weapons. Most of the CCW holders ran like little chickens.
No, they exercised good judgement, didn't risk accidentally harming someone innocent. They stated they didn't have a clear shot.
What a lot of people don't realize is that if a CCW holder had pulled a weapon (whether they fired it or not), who do you think the police would have shot when they got there? It's easy to play the what if game, if someone had done this, then that wouldn't have happened but it's really hard as things are happening to have that clarity. If someone had shot Laughner before he got a round off then people would have been saying it was murder because there was no proof he was going to do anything. You all want it both ways.
Parallell you should spend some of your time and money and actually take a CCW class. There is more to it than shooting a gun. The responsibility of it is overwhelming, much of the class is devoted to that. It's not about pulling a gun and firing off shots in a crowded room like we see on TV and movies. So until you bash the folks with their CC permit, study up.
Kid is part of well regulated militia. Other kids at his school are at risk of death because his family are apparently gun nuts. Great.
With the goveneror of Texas and certain members of Congress suggesting we should require teachers to carry guns in school why not allow K-12 students to be armed also? Combine that with a national "stand your ground" law and the country can revert back to the wild, wild west.
I just found out today that at the Texas State House, if you can show your CCW, you DO NOT have to go through the metal detectors! That is, anyone who is legally armed may bypass security! I think that might be one of the coolest things I've ever heard, but I can guess you probably think otherwise. Not tryin' to pick a fight with you, but since you mentioned the Texas governor, thought I'd pass this along to be used by either side of the gun control debate lol.
The governor of Texas said nothing about requiring anyone to do anything. He thinks that teachers that have a CHL should be able to choose whether they WANT to be armed at school or not. Nobody wants to force anyone to do anything. A CHL carrier isn't your average gun owner. It's not a rubber stamp in Texas like in some other states.
Besides, just posting that it is legal for a CHL carrier to be armed on the premises is probably enough to keep the cowards that do this sort of thing away from the school entirely. They don't go where they can be shot back at. That is the paradox of the 'gun free zones'. They are an open invitation for criminals and psychos.
Well, it's Utah so not the sharpest people in the country (I lived there for a while and, thankfully, escaped). But this underscores how many parents scare the living hell out of their kids and fill their minds with the worst kind of fear and horror when something like this happens. Those poor kids in Utah are already filled with all kinds of crazy 'hell and damnation' BS as it is. It's a crazy place. I'm not surprised by this at all.
I live in Utah and my kids couldn't be further from the insensitive garbage that you said.... they are far from being filled with crazy "hell and damnation" BS. How dare you speak of something that you know nothing about. Because you met a few crazy mormons does not mean that the rest of Utah feels the same. I am glad you "escaped" because we don't need such a mean, judgemental person spewing hatred.
Do you know whether or not the parents of the kid knew he had a gun? Did they know whether or not their family member had the gun? Did the family member know they left the gun? You're all reading way too much into who's to blame and speculating our of your keesters.
Welcome to Newsvine. Just another day.
Why does this not really shock me at all!
What the heck do you expect? We have the gun nutcases on the internet saying none of this would have happened if teachers had guns in school... the kid is in 6th grade....
If you take guns away from regular 6th graders, then only criminal 6th graders will have guns! Just trying on a little of the NRA logic here, thanks for listening.
So much for "responsible" gun ownership.
So now the kid will be punished for taking steps for self-protection that those gun-toting folks say would be best: bring more guns into the school so we can have a shoot-out battle if the situation warrants it..... Punish those idiots first before you cast a stone to this child.
Criminalize thoughts of mass murder (except for active duty military)!
You want to criminalize thoughts now? How very Orwellian of you.
So the Ft. Hood shooter was golden?
IF they find out he was waving it around or threatening others then the kid is a liar. He didnt want it for protection he wanted it for the hell of it. ANd he lied when he said his parents told him to bring it yet the police said that wasnt true. This kid needs to be charged with something for this. The RIGHT way to solve this issue is to allow the teachers to carry a gun AND or to post a police officer at all schools or use the national guard or better yet our active duty people to protect OUR country and NOT other countries.... We need to worry about OUR country. They can also offer the job to veterans. I am a veteran and I would be more than willing to stand guard at my kids schools.
How many more school shootings will it take before parents are responsible enough to not leave guns and ammunition lying around for kids to get a hold of and bring to school? Unbelievable. As if this tragedy wasn't enough of a reminder to be responsible parents.
Too much violence in our homes, too much violence in our video games, too much violence on our movie and television screens.
Too little parental guidance, attention, teaching, and time. Too little responsibility for our actions.
No one is raising our children, they're just "growing up", too soon.
Stupid kid and parents.
No, the child should not have taken the gun to school but here are a few videos of when someone young was able to defend himself/herself:
... :P
Another fine member of our well regulated militia.
A scared little boy stole a gun so he wouldn't die that day. He isn't in the NRA and doesn't have a position on gun rights. His everyday world is not like yours or mine. His life is slightly ruined.
! what? The vids didn't come out?