(VIDEO) Added agony: Justice is haphazard after kids’ gun deaths

Children under age 12 die from gun accidents in the United States about once a week, on average. Almost every death begins with the same basic circumstances: an unsecured and loaded gun, a guardian’s lapse in attention. USA TODAY and AP

DURHAM, N.C. – Amy Pittman learned on her first day in jail to bottle up her grief.

As soon as she arrived, guards took her shoelaces so she wouldn’t try to hang herself. Cry too much or scream too loud and she feared they would come back to take everything she had left — her clothes, a sheet, a plastic spork.

But how could she not? How could anyone? Ten weeks before, Pittman was a single mom who worked overnight shifts as a gas station cashier to keep her three kids fed and clothed.

Now, alone in a cinderblock cell, she faced criminal charges for not doing enough to protect them. She pictured her youngest, Christian, 9, in his coffin. Blue shirt neatly tucked. Cold to the touch. Dead at the hands of his 12-year-old brother, who had accidentally shot him in the back.

“Five minutes can change your whole life,” said Pittman, 38. “I wish every day that I would have stayed home.”

Children under age 12 die from gun accidents in the United States about once a week, on average. Almost every death begins with the same basic circumstances: an unsecured and loaded gun, a guardian’s lapse in attention. And each ends with the same basic questions: Who is to blame, and should the person be punished?

An investigation by the USA TODAY Network and the Associated Press found those questions are answered haphazardly across the nation.

Nearly identical accidents can have markedly different outcomes. A shooting that leads to a prison sentence in one state can end with no prosecution at all in another.

Read more at USAToday.com