"Before their son could do any serious damage, fast-acting Utah parents who noticed two family guns were missing Thursday morning tracked him down in a junior high classroom and quickly disarmed him, authorities said.

He had been behaving oddly that morning when he left for Mueller Park Junior High School, troubling his parents, according to the Bountiful City Police Department. Their concern only grew when they realized, after he departed, that the space in their gun safe where a shotgun and pistol usually sat was empty.

The parents rushed to Mueller Park to find their son, authorities said, but as they walked down a hallway, searching, they heard the blast of a gunshot.

Inside a classroom nearby, filled with a teacher and 26 students, the teen had fired one round into the ceiling, leaving behind a plate-size hole.

His parents were soon there, police said, and immediately “disarmed him, then physically detained him.”

Immediately after, at 8:13 a.m., a 911 caller alerted police, and a patrol officer in the area arrived at the school 41 seconds later, authorities said. The teen was arrested and later booked into the Farmington Bay Juvenile Detention Center on multiple charges, including theft of a firearm and taking a weapon into a school, reported the Associated Press.

Authorities recovered a 12-gauge shotgun, 9mm pistol and ammunition for each gun.

At a news conference Thursday, police Chief Tom Ross told reporters that he initially feared a more tragic outcome.

“I was expecting much worse than what happened,” he said. “To have this event unfold at a junior high school and have no injuries — including to the suspect — is pretty amazing.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/12/02/fast-acting-utah-parents-disarmed-their-teen-son-at-school-preventing-a-possible-tragedy/?utm_term=.4cb0ffcb7ca3

They need to amend their rules for "show and tell".

Boy, those days are gone forever, right?!

I recall while living in NYC of a little six year old boy who brought his dad's gun to his class in the Bronx, for show and tell. That didn't go over very well.

Gun safe?






Not very.




Nice job Mom & Dad...NOT! Kids shouldn't have easy access to weapons. Parents are responsible for kids actions, legally...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/2016 02:17PM by csuprovograd.

Wow! Good job parents!

1) That they apparently interacted with their son enough so that they noticed the unusual behavior

2) They trusted their instincts and began to look around - didn't just brush it off

2) And then to actually go to the school themselves and intervene

seekyr Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 1) That they apparently interacted with their son
> enough so that they noticed the unusual behavior

But perhaps not enough to notice things building to this. People don't go from perfectly normal to shooting up a school in one morning.

Although I do give these parents kudos for acting the way they did when they saw the signs, I also believe that if the kid had caused any harm, the parents should have been held responsible.

I'm ok with "responsible" gun owners. However, we need to hold them responsible. If a kid gets a gun and shoots himself or someone else, an adult belongs in jail. And I don't care if they're a mormon mother with six kids at home. When you decide to have a gun in your home, you're assuming responsibility for what happens with that gun.

I live in a city that competes with Detroit, St. Louis, and Birmingham for most violent crime city in America. Sometimes we're number one, sometimes number four (not often). We have over one murder a day. I can't imagine how many guns there are in this city. My ex owns several dozen himself. In the 12 years I've lived here, I've only once heard of someone successfully protecting themself or their family because they had a gun. But I don't know how many accidental shootings get reported. Many. Along with a very high suicide rate. I'll take my chances going gun free.

Yet, I'd rather live here and take my chances than the many years I spent in Stepford, Utah, feeling extremely safe, but driven insane by the pod people.

It sounds like their child was suicidal. After shooting a hole through the roof, he was next aiming the pistol at himself when they intervened. Still, he had enough ammo on him to have done major damage had he intended to.

Good they acted quickly. Although the parents guns should've been kept under lock and key. I wonder whether there'll be charges against them for not securing their guns better than they did? On the other hand they're being hailed for saving the day.

They all should be sent to jail permanently. Just my opinion.

I think his parents should have called 911 as soon as they noticed the guns missing.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure they didn't want their kid dead. That's why they addressed the problem directly.

Hopefully now the parents will have the good sense to remove all guns from the house permanently.

And I agree with Hervey -- they should have called 911 immediately upon discovering the missing guns. They just got lucky that he hadn't killed a dozen by them.

I agree they should have called 911 immediately, but I can't blame them exactly for trying to stop it themselves. I can't help but think that the police would have had to shoot him dead if they had gotten there first. Actually, it was VERY LUCKY that they were able to stop him. It really could have ended very differently.

just how did the kid get into the gun safe ?

negligent parents ?

Weapons were not secured? Oh right, this is the USA.

In some areas we (Americans) are the among the stupidest people in the world.

I didn't glean from the news report the weapons were secured before the kid left the house with them. Out of sight out of mind isn't exactly how one child proofs the house from a 14-year old who's challenged.

Wouldn't leave guns around for a toddler either. That is one of the dumbest things parents do, is to believe their kids are "responsible" when they're still children.

Terrible possibilities, how fortunate that no-one died. Without knowing the kid, it'd be hard to figure out how negligent the parents were. In some areas, it's very common for teenagers to have free access to family guns. Parents wouldn't even think a thing about it, except, as here, if the guns go missing at the beginning of the school day.

These days, to most of us, I hope that it seems obvious that guns should be securely locked up, particularly in households with children. Any children.

But I also know that many households in my family hunt on a regular basis. All of the kids learn to shoot and to handle firearms. Many of them go hunting as teen-agers with no adults along. It's just assumed that by the time they are teens, the kids are old enough to act responsibly with guns.

*I am not saying that this is a good idea.*

But this could have happened in any one of about five different households of my relatives, that I can think of. The guns are locked away from the little children, but the teens all know the combination or where the key is kept. Because how else can they get the gun to go hunting after school? Or do target practice? It's way more common than some of us might think.

It is still considered normal behavior by many in some circles.

It took MADD to effect a change. Something similar needs to be done about guns in the home.

Let's forget all about the 2nd amendment, that's just for those old white guys./s

guns for kids


http://www.vpc.org/publications/start-them-young-tactical-rifles-for-kids/

When I was a kid, we had rifles on a rack in the pickup truck, there were shooting clubs at school and we weren't pu88ies.