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"This was not an accidental shooting, there was intent behind it," said Newport News, Virginia Police Chief Steve Drew.

The perpetrator is a 6-year-old boy.

He fired a gun at his teacher.

She was seriously injured in the accident.

During a lesson, the child pulled out a gun, pointed it at the teacher and pulled the trigger.

The gun belongs to the first-grader's mother, who has a permit for it, the police chief says. 

The boy's family said through their lawyer that the child had a disability and was taken to school by one of his parents every day.

The week of the shooting, he was allowed to go to school alone for the first time.

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"For the rest of our lives, we will regret that none of us accompanied him that day," says the child's father.

In the meantime, the boy is placed in a medical facility, without it being clear what his future fate will be.

Also unclear are the implications for the mother in whose name the gun is registered.

Children and young people often get their hands on guns

Even in the US, it is rare for a 6-year-old to knowingly point a gun at another person.

However, cases in which children or young people find themselves with access to firearms are not so rare.

A few days ago in Dallas, a 14-year-old girl shot an 11-year-old boy in a parking lot.

The girl in question got into an argument with another girl and pointed a gun at him, but fatally shot a nearby 11-year-old boy.

His mother, meanwhile, issued an emotional address: "We adults need to talk to our children and teach them that violence is not the way to solve problems."

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A 6-year-old who shot his teacher and a 14-year-old who shot an 11-year-old boy.

A video is circulating on the Internet showing a small child walking with a gun in his hand in a residential area.

In many households, guns are kept unlocked

One thing is clear: too many parents who own guns do not store them out of reach of children.

According to a Harvard University study, 4.6 million children in the US live in homes where there is a loaded gun that is not securely locked.

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said: "Police officers with 20, 25 years of service say that if it used to be very unusual for a young person to get hold of a firearm, today it has become the norm."

In some US states, adults are required by law to store their guns so that they cannot fall into the hands of children.

But this is not observed everywhere.

Josh Sugarman of the Violence Policy Center, which advocates for safer gun control, regrets that the issue of gun storage has not been legislated at the national level - to have the same rules in place in all states.

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This often leads to cases where children manage to get hold of firearms and even shoot them.

According to data from the Everytown For Gun Safety organization, in 2022 at least 301 shots fired by children with firearms were recorded.

Of these, over a third were fatal.

And adults kill: for 2023 there are already dozens of people shot

And 2023 begins with bad news from the US: in the first 21 days of the year alone, there have already been a total of 38 gun attacks in which at least four people have been killed.

However, two more deadly attacks in recent days have been added to them.

Over the weekend in southern California, a gunman shot and killed 11 people at a dance hall celebrating the Chinese New Year.

And yesterday - again in California - a 64-year-old man killed 7 people who were his colleagues in two farms.

The shooter surrendered to the police. 

In the US, there are at least as many guns as the country's population: one in three adults owns at least one gun, and nearly one in two lives in a household with at least one gun.

Over the past three years - 2020, 2021 and 2022 - an average of 55 people were killed each day in the US.

Annually, the number of victims for this period is between nearly 19,500 and just over 21,000. About a quarter of those killed are minors, writes "Deutsche Welle" in its material.