Letters: Blame 6-year-old shooter's parents. Teachers should have rejected bad call
Blame the parents
I am not sure what surprised me the most about the Jan. 28 column "Adults failed boy before he shot teacher," by Connie Schultz.
Is it that she is actually a journalist or is it the glaring admission in her "Top Five" list?
Number One on the list should have been his mother, the legal gun owner who through her own negligence allowed the boy to have access to a firearm. Children do not come to school and get access to firearms through the school store or check them out from the school library.
As is the case with many school shootings, the student brought the gun from home.
The criminal justice system in Michigan is holding the parents of a high school shooter liable for their son's actions. The same should be true with the parents in Newport News, Va. Had the failure of the adults at home not occurred first, the adults at school would not have had the opportunity to fail.
Gary L. Sigrist, Jr., Grove City
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Teacher shooting could have been avoided.
I am a 30-year retired Columbus city schoolteacher. I taught first grade for nine years. I cannot imagine spending a whole day in class suspecting that a student has hidden a gun at school.
I am dumbfounded that a school full of teachers accepted the poor decision of an administrator to just wait until the end of the school day to see how it all plays out. Most of the teachers had easy access to their phones.
A quick 911 call could have stopped this tragedy. The worst that could have happened was being accused of being over cautious.
Nancy Connor, Bexley
Gun should have been locked
Well-presented opinion (Jan. 28 "Adults failed boy before he shot teacher") of 6-year-old child who shot his teacher.
Yet Connie Schultz has her numbering system wrong.
Instead of being buried in the paragraph above Fact #5, Fact #1 needs to be: any adult/parent who has a loaded gun in the house should have the gun in a locked and secured place that is inaccessible to children.
If this does not happen, this ADULT/PARENT has failed to protect the children. And that's a prime fact that could have averted all the other facts.
Peg Traver Baer, Columbus
Don't call it gun violence
Regarding your Jan. 28 article "Officials unveil plans to combat gun violence." Let's stop calling it "gun violence." It is "criminal violence."
Let's identify and catalog criminals rather than guns. This will give a far better insight on how to fight crime than cataloging guns.
Paul Sheridan, Dublin
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Letters: Teachers should have rejected school's bad call
