I see a lot of reports of students bringing guns to school. After more than seven years of intensive focus on Second Amendment-related news, it’s hard not to. It’s a thing that happens, and in a nation of over 330 million people, it’s going to happen regularly enough if you’re scanning news from across the nation that includes the word “gun.”
But a report from Chesapeake, Virginia caught my eye enough that I figured I needed to write about it.
Why?
Well, normally, the students caught with a gun–99 percent of them are not planning a mass shooting, for the record–are male. This one? Not so much.
A Grassfield High School student was detained after it was discovered that she had brought a handgun to school, according to Chesapeake Public Schools and Chesapeake police.
Around 11:30 a.m., Brian Haughinberry, Principal of Grassfield High School, alerted parents and guardians that earlier in the day another student reported to “a trusted adult” that a student had brought a loaded handgun onto school grounds.
“I want to commend the student who did the right thing by reporting this matter to a trusted adult,” Haughinberry said in the statement. “Today’s response is a strong example of our ‘see something, say something’ message in action.”
A spokesperson with the Chesapeake Police Department said the student, described as a female juvenile, was immediately taken into custody and transported to juvenile Intake.
Like I said, this is normally a male-student kind of thing, but there is no reason it had to remain so. Equal opportunity for being arrested and kicked out of school is a thing, apparently.
Here, the system in place worked. Someone saw something, then told an adult who then took the accusation seriously and it was investigated thoroughly. This is exactly how it should work.
That isn’t stopping some parents from freaking out and talking about how officials should be doing more to keep schools safe.
Some parents said they are planning to ask the school board to do more to protect their kids.
“I’d hate to put metal detectors in for the kids in the school, but that’s probably the safest thing,” Comer said
The message from administrators also said that no threats were made to students or staff during this incident, and it encourages parents to remind their students that quote that weapons of any kind are strictly prohibited on school grounds.
Some parents are using this to lash out at the school’s cell phone policy, which I totally get, but as for the rest, I’d like to point out to these parents that the kid who reported this girl did the right thing. Freaking out isn’t exactly going to encourage others to do so should they see something.
Instead, they might decide to remain silent because they don’t want parents getting worked up over nothing, only to find out too late that it wasn’t “nothing.”
Metal detectors might help, but let’s not get carried away. Again, the system worked. While metal detectors could help, folks need to calm down for a bit and recognize exactly what transpired and stop this. It’s not helping.
Read the full article here
