Although, that said, how does an 11 year old skip school? My parents took me into school, then I couldn't leave. Perhaps different situations over there..
In a ways, that would be correct. My siblings and I usually rode the bus to school as both our parents were working before we'd wake up. It would have been easy for one or all four of us to feign illness and skip school, but we knew better...most of the time.
Back to the original subject, despite being a rural Wisconsinite I know where Johnson Creek is (my aunt lives near Milwaukee). Wisconsin is a state that enjoys its guns and its hunting, especially in the northern part where I live.
My dad, my two brothers and my 13-year old nephew all hunt, everything from deer to small game to even bears, so I've seen my fair share of guns. All four took hunter's safety classes and know how to properly handle firearms. And that includes storing both the guns and ammo where people like my eight-year old nephew and my seventeen-month old niece won't get curious and explore.
I don't remember seeing any shotguns or rifles that much as a child except for deer season, which means my dad did a helluva job hiding them. And when my family would visit my grandmother who lived out in the countryside, we knew better than to touch the BB gun she used to keep the squirrels from eating out of her bird feeders...or her firecrackers. It boiled down to the adults storing stuff properly or in the case of Grandma and her BB gun and firecrackers, telling us to keep our mitts off.
Reading this story, yes it is tragic, but it could've been avoided if the kid and his parents practiced responsibility and common sense. The parents should have hidden the gun, and the kid should have learned about the dangers of firearms. And not skip school.