Outraged mom blames gun laws in viral video after 6-year-old shoots his teacher at school

On Friday, January 6, a 6-year-old boy shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School in Newport, Virginia, according to the New York Times.

Initially officials feared that the incident was shaping up to be another mass shooting, a horrific scene similar to the Uvalde shooting or Sandy Hook, but this tragedy proved to be something else entirely: a school shooting involving a very young child.

The Newport News Police Department reported that a first grader, a 6-year-old little boy, shot his teacher on Friday afternoon. They also released that it was, “not an accidental shooting.” The boy and the teacher involved in the shooting had been involved in an altercation in a classroom before the boy shot the teacher. There has since been no further information on the boy or how he obtained the gun.

The teacher suffered “life-threatening” injuries but by Saturday she was in stable condition.

While children and teachers were waiting in fear at the school, parents had the unfathomably hard position of waiting for news at a nearby church. It’s reported that a medic was also called there because some parents were, “hyperventilating as they waited for information.”

Although this is the first reported school shooting of 2023, in 2022 the United States had the highest number of deaths and injuries due to school shootings from the past five years alone.

News stations covering the awful incident spoke to parents. This viral clip of one mom showing her outrage has over 9 million views.

“Let’s do something. Let’s change it. You’ve got a beautiful country. You’ve got beautiful people. But what’s the problem? Guns,” she says.

“The problem is the bloody guns. I’m only here because my husband is in the military. Otherwise I would not have chosen to come to this country,” she continues.”

Richneck Elementary has more than 550 students throughout kindergarten and fifth grade. The city of Newport News is in southeast Virginia and is home to a large military community.

The National Center for Education Statistics reports that the K-12 School Shooting Database shows 59 incidents involving guns at elementary schools in the 2020-2021 school year. In 2016 that number was in single digits.

It can feel extremely scary to drop your kids off for school in the morning, especially in a country where the gun laws don’t seem to be reflective of the state of things. Here is an age-by-age guide on how to talk to your kids about school shootings.