Today is Monday, January 9, 2023. Now is the time to admit to Prince Harry fever as the Duke of Sussex’s new tell-all called Spare comes out globally tomorrow. In anticipation of this long-awaited memoir about the British royal family, all not very flattering, CNN anchor Anderson Cooper sat down with the fairly young prince in an exclusive interview with the embattled ex-royal on Sunday on 60 Minutes. The memoir is chock full of revelations concerning Harry’s fractured relationship with his big brother, Prince William, who actually came to blows with his younger brother over Harry’s choice for a life partner, Meghan Markle, whom William blasted as “difficult,” “rude,” and “abrasive.” Harry writes that William “grabbed me by the collar” and “knocked me to the floor.” Eventually, William did retreat and supposedly returned “looking regretful, and apologised.” This retelling of a fraternal scuffle was reported in the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper, which first reported the book’s contents.

Even though interest in Prince Harry’s upcoming new book is high, I’m still reeling from a terrible story out of Newport News, Virginia, in which a six-year-old child – repeat, a six-year-old – shot his teacher at Richneck Elementary School, thus becoming one of the youngest school shooters in our nation’s gory history.

While details about this extremely disturbing case are still emerging, his teacher remains hospitalized with serious injuries. This horrific story appears online in Phys.org by David Riedman entitled “First grader who shot teacher in Virginia is among the youngest school shooters in nation’s history.” Hey, folks, it’s only January 9 and this shooting occurred just days in the New Year. How rare is this type of shooting? A database documents the relative rarity of this type of shooting in gun-crazed America. The database is called the K-12 School Shooting Database and it details the frequency of these types of school assaults.

According to the database, this is the 17th shooting involving a student under the age of 10 at a school since 1970 – the first year that the database took account of these events. Most of these shootings were not intentional. However, in 1975, a 9-year-old student at the Pitcher School in Detroit was in a fight with a 13-year-old, left campus, got a rifle from his house, and came back to the school and shot the student in the head, killing him.

“In 2000, a 6-year-old boy fatally shot his 6-year-old classmate, Kayla Roland, in their classroom at Buell Elementary School in Michigan while their teacher lined up other students in the hallway.” The shooting followed a dispute on the playground.

As you must be thinking in this most recent situation, where do these juvenile shooters get their firearms? It’s not much of a mystery – from their parents or from a relative or a friend. In the 2000 shooting at Buell Elementary School, the student’s uncle pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and was sentenced to prison for a minimum of two years for leaving a firearm in an easily accessible place. If you ask me, this uncle should have received more prison time for his utter negligence that led to the senseless death of a preteen.

What stands out about this particular case in Virginia is that it appears to be intentional on the part of the young shooter. While many details have not been forthcoming as of yet, it is likely that the student had the gun with him the entire day, possibly multiple days, before shooting his instructor. In many states, the legal system assumes that young children are not capable of the thought and planning that goes into committing a violent crime. In Virginia, the minimum age to charge someone with a felony is 14 years old.

According to published data, school shootings at any age are relatively rare, despite the attention they generate in the media. There have been 17 shootings involving kids under 10 publicly reported across a 52-year period. “More than 50 million students attend schools every year, and fewer than 300 of them shoot someone on campus.”

It goes without saying that to prevent such reoccurrences of incidents like these, it is the ultimate responsibility of every parent, relative, and older sibling to make sure that every firearm is locked, secured, and accounted for.

This new horror took place in front of other children who were most assuredly traumatized by the scene unfolding in front of them. These students will all need extensive counseling to understand and deal with this trauma. For the other students, teachers, and parents, this is also a traumatic experience, and many students may no longer want to go to school. How does one deal with this psychological distress when it is experienced at such a young age?

All I can say about this latest terrible event is wonder about how many more of these senseless shootings will we have to experience before something more concrete is done about the incalculable number of firearms owned by Americans.

A mirror attack on a country’s government that was exported by our January 6, 2021 insurrection occurred in Brasilia today, Brazil’s capital, by rabid supporters of the former president Jair Bolsonaro who stormed the buildings in protest against the new president’s administration. The difference in this situation was that the building was not occupied by legislators like ours at the Capitol, so no one was in jeopardy like on that fateful date in this country in 2021. Another difference in this situation was that police actively moved in and made 1,000 arrests and halted the insurrection. With our homegrown insurrection, all of the rioters were able to leave the building after marauding through it. They were arrested after many months of investigations. Another change from our Capitol protest is that Brazilian new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva (Lula), was already inaugurated on January 1, while ours occurred before President Joe Biden took over the reins of government.

The Brazilian equivalent of the twice-impeached U.S. president, Jair Bolsonaro, left his country for the United States on December 30, 2022 – just two days before President Lula’s inauguration – and is currently in Ron DeSant-ASS’s refugee state for homegrown presidential terrorists and is currently in a Florida hospital suffering from abdominal “discomfort,” according to his wife Michelle Bolsonaro in an Instagram post. Supposedly Bolsonaro’s “discomfort” is related to injuries he sustained from a 2018 knife attack during a political rally, not from the comfort food he was seen eating in a photo taken of him in a fast food franchise.

Just like his idol Dumpf, Bolsonaro routinely attacked and discredited Brazil’s electoral system, the country’s Supreme Court, and left-wing voters and leadership during the course of his presidency. He also never explicitly conceded to Lula’s election win last December, thus fanning the flames of a possible revolt against the government, as what happened here in this country when the Orange Fiend stoked his dimwitted mob into action. Just as what should have happened over this latest right-wing desecration of governmental buildings fueled by lies told by the top leader of the government, the world condemned the failed insurrection.

New reports about that shooting of the teacher at an elementary school in Virginia is that the teacher, Abigail Zwerner, is being hailed now as a hero for evacuating students from her classroom even after she was shot by a six-year-old assailant. Zwerner is only 25 years old, by the way. She is also reported in stable condition today after the shooting, which is great news. Meanwhile, the first-grader is in temporary custody at a medical facility, and a judge had until Tuesday to determine whether to extend a temporary order keeping him in custody, according to Police Chief Steve Drew. It was too soon to determine whether the boy’s parents might be charged with a crime for failing to secure the weapon, which the boy’s mother had bought legally, Drew said. One obvious question that I failed to mention above about this disturbing situation is how in the hell does a six-year-old even know how to use a firearm. Did his mother give him lessons in how to fire a gun? It’s very hard to imagine this scenario, but anything is possible these days.

Well, it’s time for me to go, as Elliot is expected very soon. His flight is expected to be in within an hour. I’d like to be finished here when he sweeps into the apartment.

Marvelous news: Damar Hamlin who collapsed in the middle of a game between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals is out of the hospital and is back in Buffalo. This recovery is nothing short of miraculous, it appears. His fans are all so relieved to hear the wonderful news. So is everyone else who heard about this young player’s misfortune. We wish him continued health on his journey toward a full recovery.

Stay safe and be well.