CONCORD, N.H. - He was 6, in his first-grade class in Newport News, Virginia. He pointed a handgun at his teacher, police say, and then he pulled the trigger. And across the nation, people ... didn't quite know how to react.
Even in a country where is sadly commonplace, the story of a small boy with a gun is reverberating in a big way. There has been finger-pointing. Confusion. Floundering for answers. Mass grappling with deeply uncomfortable feelings. And questions: How could something like this possibly happen? Where in the national consciousness do we put it?
鈥淚t is almost impossible to wrap our minds around the fact that a 6-year-old first-grader brought a loaded handgun to school and shot a ,鈥 Mayor said that day, Jan. 6. 鈥淗owever, this is exactly what our community is grappling with today.鈥
It鈥檚 not just his community, though, and it wasn鈥檛 just that day. This is a country full of people who know exactly what they think about everything, and say so. Yet many are throwing their hands up at this. In a land awash in hot takes, it鈥檚 a head-scratcher. A heart-scratcher, even.
鈥淚 never thought elementary students being the shooter was a possibility we would ever see,鈥 says Kendra Newton, a first-grade teacher in Florida.
That may be because it sits outside what people are accustomed to. Jennifer Talarico, a psychology professor at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, believes the case hits differently in part because it violates society鈥檚 expectations for both school shootings (of which there were two others elsewhere in the country that day) and childhood itself.
鈥淪adly, we have schemas, we have rubrics, we have archetypes for school shootings in this country. We have a sort of script for these things,鈥 said Talarico, who has studied how people remember indirectly experienced events. 鈥淯sing the phrase 鈥榮chool shooting鈥 as a shorthand leads us to develop that story in our heads, and when the facts of the case are so different ... that is what is surprising.鈥
Americans typically view childhood as an encapsulation of the best of our society and values, Talarico says 鈥 innocence, fun, joy, love. Anything that challenges that deep-seated view unearths complicated questions about the culture and community in which a child is being raised 鈥 whether it be local culture and community or the entire nation.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 some hard self-reflection,鈥 she says. 鈥淭hat is why the story is resonating with people.鈥
Americans are left struggling with a scenario that doesn鈥檛 fit into any bucket. But as jarring as that may feel, there鈥檚 a danger in trying to force the incident into a familiar framework, says Marsha Levick, chief legal officer and co-founder of the Juvenile Law Center.
She believes Americans have become 鈥渟o stuck in a place of punishment鈥 that they have lost the ability to have conversations outside those boundaries. By labeling the shooting with the loaded word 鈥渋ntentional,鈥 Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew is inviting people to view it as a criminal act, Levick asserts.
鈥淭hat is ludicrous. It is absurd. It is utterly inconsistent with science and what we know about human development and child development,鈥 she says. 鈥淟et鈥檚 own that. This was not a criminal act.鈥
Levick would like law enforcement to acknowledge that 鈥渢his is not our lane,鈥 as it did more than two decades ago in one of the few cases from the recent past that bears some resemblance to the Virginia shooting. When a 6-year-old boy , Genesee County Prosecuting Attorney Arthur Busch didn't go after the boy, but after those who provided access to the gun.
In an interview last week, Busch said he鈥檚 been surprised by the repeated use of 鈥渋ntentional鈥 by Newport News police.
鈥淚t was like fingernails on a chalkboard when I heard the police say it was intentional,鈥 he said. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 call it intentional when it鈥檚 a 6-year-old. ... He鈥檚 not old enough to have intent.鈥
Busch, who later became a defense attorney and retired in 2018, remembers visiting the boy at a group home and squeezing into a child-sized chair to chat. The boy proudly showed him pictures he had colored and his favorite toys. A smile revealed two missing front teeth, and they talked about the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny.
鈥淗e was excited because he knew he was going to get candy,鈥 Busch said. 鈥淚t was quite clear that he was not hatching any diabolical plots. He was just a typical little kid. He was a baby, pretty much.鈥
Busch remembers being dumbfounded when notified of the 2000 shooting. 鈥淚 just couldn鈥檛 wrap my head around that,鈥 he said. But he knew immediately he wouldn鈥檛 bring any charges.
鈥淭he only thing to do with that boy is get him out of that situation, find the best place for him,鈥 Busch said. 鈥淭his kid had probably never seen love in his life. We needed to wrap our arms around him as a community, and love and protect him.鈥
The Virginia case is sure to stir debate about gun control and school safety. But Moira O鈥橬eill, who led New Hampshire鈥檚 Office of the Child Advocate for five years, says anyone feeling shaken by the incident can take a few simple steps. She says an abundance of research shows that the best way to support child development and promote resilience is to offer children a sense of belonging.
In short: Don't let your shock paralyze you. Take steps to value children in your own community.
鈥淭his is not a big commitment. This is simply knowing the kids, knowing their names, and giving the impression if they need help they can ask,鈥 she said. 鈥淚f neighbors choose to settle with being shocked, without thinking through ways they can contribute to child well-being and safety, they are sending the message that the children are not valued.鈥
Whether all the reflection around the Virginia shooting leads to change remains to be seen. Talarico, whose work includes studying the 鈥渕emory-laden language鈥 that often surrounds big events, says imperatives like 鈥淣ever Forget鈥 don鈥檛 always lead to sweeping action 鈥 particularly when it comes to guns.
鈥溾橬ever Forget鈥," she says, "hasn鈥檛 effectively translated to 鈥楴ever Again.鈥欌
___
Associated Press writer Denise Lavoie in Richmond, Virginia, contributed to this report.
