Gun in school

I got a lot of reaction around the newsroom about my story today. A 9-year-old kid brought a gun to York Road Elementary School last month. Police said he pointed it at two other kids and told them he was going to kill them. The child was taken from his home, studied and then determined not competent to be charged with any crimes. Now he has been returned to his family and no charges will be filed against anyone in the family.

Several people I have talked to cannot believe that happened. I've been thinking about it a lot, trying to come up with the right answers when people ask about it. What I think should or should not have happened is irrelevant. Here is my take on why things played out the way they did:

In order to charge someone with a crime, the solicitor's office has to be able to say that person understands the crime and understands the legal system well enough that they can help their defense attorneys in their case. There is certainly some argument about whether a 9-year-old understands that bringing a gun to school is wrong, but it is not hard to see that maybe he doesn't understand the judicial system that well.

Then there is the issue of the parents. Should the kid's parents be charged with a crime for putting their child in a situation where they have access to a gun in the first place? Police say the gun didn't belong to anyone in the home. They say the child's mother had no way to know that her son was getting in a car with a loaded gun the morning her boy took that gun to school in his backpack.

So what about the gun's owner? Police say he had the gun legally. He was taking it to his dad in Chester and left it in the car to keep it away from children in the house. Police said the gun's owner didn't know the fourth-grader and his older sister would be driving that car to school. Once he heard what happened, he came forward and told police it was his gun. The Herald asked law enforcement about the owner of the gun back when this first happened and we were told it could take weeks to trace the weapon. In at least one subsequent call this month we were told they still did not know who owned the gun.

So who should be held responsible? I know people are fired up about the way this has played out, so tell me, what should have happened?