• Guns in the US A Self-Destructive Passion Rooted in History

A six-year-old boy opened fire in a

Virginia

elementary school classroom Friday , seriously injuring a teacher, and is in police custody, police said.

No students were injured in the incident at

Richneck Elementary School

in the coastal city of

Newport News

, in the eastern United States.

"The individual is a six-year-old student. Right now he is in police custody," local police chief

Steve Drew

said at a press conference , adding that "it was not an accidental shooting."

Police reported the victim is a female teacher in her 30s whose injuries are believed to be life-threatening.

"I'm shocked and heartbroken," said the city's superintendent of schools,

George Parker

.

"We need the support of the community to make sure that guns are out of the reach of young people."

School shootings ravage the United States, with recent tragedies including the killing last May of 19 children and two teachers in

Uvalde, Texas

, by an 18-year-old gunman.

According to the

Gun Violence Archive

, there were some 44,000 firearm-related deaths in the United States last year, about half of which were murder, accidents, and self-defense, and the other half were suicides.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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