Thanks.
OK, a semi-auto.
They are tough to load, very tough to fill the magazine, and sorta non-intuitive to insert the magazine in such a way that it clicks into place. Then you have to "rack" the slide to load it. The racking would not be easy for, what?...a six year old. Then you'd have to turn off the safety.
Being a Taurus, it *may* have a built-in locking mechanism. If so, they are not unlockable by any normal means, as I found out when I had misplaced the key for a while. It withstood any and all of my non-destructive strategies to by-pass the lock.
Now the way this is being handled and reported, it is as if no human agency was involved. The gun just up and unlocked itself, loaded itself, racked a round into the chamber, actively evaded any search (as claimed by the school), jumped into the kid's hand, flicked off the safety, and discharged of its own agency.
An object of pure evil, for sure. No humans involved at any stage.
In my opinion, shaving with Occam's Razor, the gun was laying around, in a drawer at most, with a magazine loaded or partly loaded, with a round already in the chamber, possibly with the safety off, the kid knew where it was, took it to show at sharing time, and fired the gun, probably without any real idea of how it operated, other than having observed it in operation.