We just want to know where a 4th grader got a semiautomatic handgun. Supposedly it was old and rusted, with only one bullet in it. It will be interesting to see if it was ditched after a violent crime.

Police say a fourth-grader fired a semiautomatic handgun inside a New Jersey elementary school as he was showing it to a friend.

Linden Lt. Raymond Tyra says no one was injured in the gunfire at School Number 2 on Wednesday afternoon.

A 10-year-old boy was showing the .38-caliber gun to his friend in a coat closet when the weapon went off. A bullet passed through the wall and into the classroom next door, where it lodged in a wall.

We may listen twice next time we hear a teacher complain they don’t get any respect from parents. A mother and daughter are being charged with violently attacking a high school teacher, supposedly because the girl was failing the teacher’s class and the mom wasn’t too happy about it. Gee, we can’t understand why the teen might be have problems in school when she has such a fine role model at home.

Police charged Georgia Thornton, 44, and her 17-year-old daughter Sequita with attacking Felecia Williams, a teacher at Southside High School on February 28. The official charges against the mother include battery on a school teacher, disrupting a public school, criminal trespass and theft by taking in connection with the alleged attack on teacher.

Sequita Thornton was charged with battery on a teacher and disrupting a public school.

Williams told WSB-TV Channel 2 that the teenager was failing her TV Production class. The teacher claims Georgia Thornton visited the school to complain about the girl’s treatment and attacked her during the meeting, knocking her to the ground, kicking and punching her and pulling her hair. Williams claims Sequita Thornton joined the attack.

“And then she threw the book back and just took me like this and then started flinging me everywhere,” said Williams.

Williams said eventually two of her students stepped in and stopped the attack.

It seems like the administrators of “tough love” may have gone a little too far in the marketing. Federal investigators are looking into a number of youth “boot camps” — essentially boarding schools for troubled kids — for engaging in deceptive practices in encouraging parents to send their kids there. We weren’t aware this was such a big business! Now us parents are outsourcing discipline?

As part of the federal review, investigators at the Government Accountability Office made undercover calls to boot camps and referral services that work with them.

In one case, an investigator posing as a father was advised to hide information from his wife about a program, according to GAO investigator Greg Kutz, who was scheduled to testify about the investigation Thursday before a House committee.

“The referral agency warned our fictitious parents that his wife might ‘freak out’ about sending her daughter to a boarding school, and stated: ‘I want you to tell her that it’s a college prep boarding school … If she thinks that you want to send her daughter to a place where there are drug addicts and people that are all screwed up, she will look at you and say ‘no way,”‘ Kutz said in prepared testimony obtained by The Associated Press.

Kutz also stated that when investigators called a Texas wilderness therapy program, they were misled by a program representative into thinking health insurance would reimburse the family’s expenses upon completion of the program.

An Aurora, Colorado high school student with cerebral palsy is being hit with a number of charges because he allegedly ran over a girl’s feet with his wheelchair. The story doesn’t say if the girl suffered anything more than minor injuries — charging him with assault and battery seems a little extreme, doesn’t it?

Seventeen-year-old Joshua Martinez is accused of assault and battery and reckless endangerment for running over a girl’s toes in the hall.

The female student told the school nurse Martinez ran over her foot and her family wants to press charges.

Martinez says he does not remember the incident.

Witnesses told Aurora Police that Martinez drives his wheelchair very fast and bumps into people. He also sometimes rides up on two wheels.

A unique device designed to prevent teenagers from loitering is causing quite a stir. The “Mosquito” emits a high pitch frequency that only teenagers and young adults can hear. Does it work on younger children, too? Seems like a great way to get our kids out of the house and outside to play…

The high-frequency sound has been likened to fingernails dragged across a chalkboard or a pesky mosquito buzzing in your ear. It can be heard by most people in their teens and early 20s who still have sensitive hair cells in their inner ears. Whether you can hear the noise depends on how much your hearing has deteriorated — how loud you blast your iPod, for example, could potentially affect your ability to detect it.

The device has already roiled civil liberties groups in countries where it’s already in use, including England, Australia and Scotland. England’s government-appointed Children’s Commission proposed a ban. They describe it as a weapon that infringes on the basic rights of young people, and claim it could even have unknown long-term health effects.

A 14-year-old in Japan killed herself by inhaling toxic fumes from mixing cleanser and laundry detergent. The fumes were so strong 90 people in neighboring apartments also became ill, with 10 needing hospitalization. It seems this girl’s death is part of an alarming trend:

The girl’s suicide Wednesday night was part of an expanding string of similar deaths that experts say have been encouraged by Internet suicide sites since last summer.

A 31-year-old man outside Tokyo killed himself inside a car early Thursday by mixing detergent and bath salts, police said. A local police spokesman refused to give further details, but Kyodo News agency reported the man put a sign reading “Stay Away” on the car window.

At a business hotel in Shiga prefecture in western Japan, a man in his 30s was found dead Thursday morning by employees who noticed a strange smell coming from his room, according to national broadcaster NHK. Shiga police said officials are investigating the incident as a case of suicide by hydrogen sulfide gas but could not elaborate.

Reports of another similar death emerged Thusday afternoon when the body of a 42-year-old woman in Nagoya, central Japan, was found in a bathtub. According to Kyodo, there was toilet cleaner and bath powder nearby, along with a sign outside that read, “Poisonous gas being emitted. Caution.”