The six-year-old student who shot his teacher in the US earlier this year, boasted about the incident saying “I shot [her] dead”, unsealed court documents show.

While being restrained after the shooting at a Virginia school, the boy is said to have admitted “I did it”, adding “I got my mom’s gun last night”.

His teacher, Abigail “Abby” Zwerner - who survived - filed a $40m (£31.4m) lawsuit earlier this year.

The boy has not been charged.

The boy’s mother, however, Deja Taylor, has been charged with felony child neglect and misdemeanour recklessly leaving a loaded firearm as to endanger a child.

In Ms Zwerner’s lawsuit, filed in April, she accuses school officials of gross negligence for ignoring warning signs and argues the defendants knew the child "had a history of random violence

The documents also mention another incident with the same student while he was in kindergarten. A retired teacher told police he started “choking her to the point she could not breathe”.

    • PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      They say it’s so teachers can protect themselves and their students (from the consequences of failed gun laws) but really, it’s just because they have to say something – and it can’t be the truth.

      At a civilian level, most of them simply don’t care. They’re confident it will never be their kids and they consider a stranger’s children less important than their own easy access to firearms.

      But they can’t say that, so they make flowery comments about freedom, defending their family and how they’re the ones keeping America out of the hands of tyrants, even though they staunchly support tyrants and wouldn’t even wear a mask to protect other people, let alone fight and die for them.

      On the corporate and political level, there’s good money and easy votes in guns. It’s no different to tobacco, asbestos and everything else they fought to profit from even as it killed people.

      But they can’t say that either. So instead, they coordinate what today’s scapegoat is going to be. Computer games? Too many doors? Timid police? Whatever keeps the money flowing.

      The important part for all of them is demanding other solutions are tried before gun control. They know they won’t work, but it will buy them more time and the more time they waste, the better.

      That’s why their current solution is “free, universal healthcare for everybody in America, including 5 year olds and people who don’t want treatment, done to a standard far beyond even the most cutting edge of medicine, completely and permanently curing people in less time than it takes to buy a gun”.

      Which they then block anyway, because it’s important their conditions for supporting gun control are never met.

    • PurpleTentacle
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      1 year ago

      Not just teachers: this obviously wouldn’t have happened, if all the other students had been armed, too.

      The only thing that can stop a bad 6-year-old with a gun is a good 6-year-old with a gun.

    • Tehgingey@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      Bringing whole new level to “Kindergarten Cop” I don’t think Arny could have predicted this

    • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      Yes but they seem to be forgetting the very obvious thing that will happen (and has already happened) when you have more guns being brought into schools, even by those you (misguidedly) trust.

      For some reason they don’t seem to be able to get that not having guns in or anywhere near a school is the best way not to have shootings at schools.

      That article highlights just one obvious problem. Here are others:

      • We can’t even rely on our cops to shoot only the people who need to be shot. Now we’re going to trust that teachers will be able to perform better under those stresses - which may include the need to shoot one of their own students - than cops do? How on earth does that track?

      • Legal gun owners go on shooting sprees too. Really easy for you when you are already whitelisted to be showing up to school armed.

      • A variation on the article I linked: Careless teacher with a gun leaves it in the bathroom and kid finds it and shoots themselves and/or others with it instead of turning it in.

      • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Legal gun owners go on shooting sprees too.

        And teachers have to deal with an incredibly stressful situation all day which ever-restrictive Republican education laws in many states make even more stressful. Put guns in the mix and one of them will go postal one day.

      • ThePantser@midwest.social
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        1 year ago

        But the solution could be as simple as the gun is locked and retrievable by the teacher either by biometrics or code. It could also trigger a school wide alarm if the firearm is released so it would give other classes a chance to lock down. The option is there if the teacher needs it they don’t need to be having the gun on themselves.

        • be_excellent_to_each_other@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Sure, if none of the teachers ever break the rules or are careless with that system in any way, it will prevent everything except the part where we expect teachers to be better than cops at target identification and using a firearm under stress, and also expect them to be willing to shoot a student they know personally.

          We’re also expecting them to accept all the trauma that comes with that, while getting paid shit, and having chosen a career in education.

          • ThePantser@midwest.social
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            1 year ago

            That’s why I said the option would be there if they chose it. They wouldn’t be required to but it would be nice that they had the option to fight for their life.

            • rbhfd@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Better gun control would mean there would be a much lower chance they would ever be in a situation where they need to fight for their life.

    • HonkyTonkWoman@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      No, no, no, you’ve gotten it all wrong. We need armed teachers to shoot dangerous books.

      There’s no way we can ban all of the dangerous books, so we need teachers to shoot them out of the hands of our precious youth.