Unbelievable, indeed. Students routinely get suspended for the most innocent things these days, yet this one was able to get three guns into school? What the fuck?
Kudos to the principal though.
This could have been much, much worse.
And then there is the mother:
:eek:
And the 20 + guns they hauled out of their townhouse…
It’s not been too long since my years in grade school, so I think I can remember it accurately enough to comment here.
Kids that age have no fucking clue what to report and what to let go, quite honestly. More to the point, though, there’s a definite social ladder in school. Kids might see another peer as more of an authority figure than a teacher or the principal. Dumb? Yes. Natural? Arguable, but I’m leaning to the side of yes.
– Imran
And why is this such a big deal? I mean besides the fact that they had a emotionally fucked up child, if it were a normal family would it still put you off?
Sam
Owning 20 or more guns isn’t “normal.” The family owning them may all be decent, law-abiding people, possessing all imaginable virtue, but normal? Nah.
Maybe they didn’t think he was joking and were helping him, and what they said was just an excuse.
Having 20+ guns in the home definitely isn’t normal, but as long as precautions are made to keep them locked away from kids, it’s not wrong either.
On a side note, when will bullying be treated seriously? A simple “don’t pick on junior”, doesn’t cut it folks. Suspend these fucking imbeciles! No, fuck that. I’ve learned that 4hr Saturday detentions are enough to stop the shit I pulled in school. Fuck, do something, before shit like this happends.
I don’t condone what this kid was attempting to do, but I sure as hell can understand why he attempted this. Fucking sad.
One did admit to helping him, up to a point.
You don’t live in rural Pennsylvania, do you?
Gun collections are fairly common; as are collectors. Are you saying that they aren’t “normal?” What do you mean by “normal?”
I agree. If I’d reported every dangerous sounding fantasy I heard from other school children when I was at school, I would have never been out of the police station. And probably 99.9% of them turned out to be just that; fantasies. Empty talk and bragging that teenagers are full of. I don’t know what I’d have done if I’d been legally obliged to tell which ones were for real.
True, these fantasies usually didn’t involve a stash of rifles, as no-one could even pretend they had access to such things.
A gun collector certainly isn’t a “normal” person. They are a gun collector and thus have a valid reason for having a large number of guns. It does not mean they are fucked in the head or psycho’s, but seeing as gun collectors are certainly a minority then they also are not “normal”.
Back to the point of the thread though. I wondered when this would start happening. Kids are often very willing to cover for each other, and with the Safe Schools Act deeming even a drawing of a pistol or other weapon to be a violation, kids are going to start covering for each other a bit and not report every incident. I think if I was 13 and my friend told me he was going to bring guns to school and blow someone away I probably would have thought “yeah right” and even helped him to plan it in a satiric way. I surely wouldn’t have thought he would actually do it. Now, I don’t know, there is a line somewhere where a kid shouldn’t be expelled for suspicious behavior, but should be closely scrutinized for that behavior.
I heartily disagree with you. What, praytell, would be “abnormal” about it? Do you conjur up images of testosterone-laden adult men doing evil things with them? Or do you see a more rational image of a family with some rifles for hunting, or clay target shooting, or sport handgun shooting, and maybe a weapon for self-defense?
I don’t agree with most pro-gun people. For instance, I agree with the assualt weapons ban, which most prog-gun people abhor. But your characterization of a family with ~20 weapons as “abnormal,” is beyond reproach.
Most weapons end up in the hands of a family through familymember-to-familymember transfers, E.G.-inheritance. They keep them either because of the memory of the person and what, say a gun meant to their childhood hunting with dad, or because our current anti-gun lobby and legislation has made the sale of those firearms prohibitively expensive, complicated, time consuming and confusing.
Before you ask, yes, I own at least 20 weapons. Most are rifles purchased and gunsmithed by my fater. Most are either antique(rolling blocks from the turn of the century, Krags), or World War II relics that are either in stock form and unshootable or have been cnverted to a modern weapon. Most are unfired by me. I own 2 shotguns, one of which is a turn of the century Stevens double barrel owned by my father and his father before him. I own a number of handguns which I like to take to the range and just do a little shooting when my wife gives me a hall pass(like last night).
So in my opinion, it’s safe to say that your mischaracterization of the modern family owning firearms is insulting and without base.
Cheers.
Sam
Can’t stress this point enough. The fact that there were guns in the townhouse wasn’t a problem. I have guns in my townhouse, too. They’re no problem to anybody.
The fact that he had them at school, and mom was clueless, now THAT’S a problem.
I also don’t know why people freak out over the quantity of firearms people own. Not all guns are well suited for every task, and there are also legitimate collectors out there. This leads to people often having many guns. This is generally no problem at all.
Lee Harvey Oswald only had two guns. He was far more a threat than the friend of mine that owns over two hundred. There’s no correlation here.
Buh-bam. Anytime a parent is clueless about the disposition of a firearm-or even leaving firearms outside of a safe or without cablelocks on them-the parent is at fault. Just like the Green Bay Packers coach whose kid killed himself accidentally with dads LOADED fucking gun that was just laying around the garage, mom is at fault here.
Of course, if mom doesn’t see that her son is cracking under pressure, how can she be expected to pay heed to the weapons sitting in her van, or what their intent may be?
America’s youth problem, in my absolutely unofficial opinion, is that a lot of our parents have just fucking checked the fuck out. If I did any of the things or acted in any of the ways these schoolkids did, not only would my mom have known, but I would have(and did), ended up at a counselor’s office working the problem out.
[/soapbox]
Sam
I was just about to say, “Fuck You,” but then it occurred to me that you are probably just using the language imprecisely. Rather than “normal,” you mean “average,” do you not?
'Cuz I can name at least a half-dozen people amongst my close friends and close family members who have 20 guns or more. A couple of them a lot more. As in more than a hundred. And I’ll bet there’s a fair number of members of this message board who own 20 or more guns.
In any case, I remember back during the Koresh/Waco thing the press claiming that the Branch Davidians had a shitload of guns. As it turned out, they actually had fewer guns than the mean for the residents of Texas. The figure 2.8 guns per person in the state of Texas pops into mind as the mean, but I won’t swear to it. Seems reasonable though, considering that there’ just about 1 gun in existence per person nationwide and approximately 50% of the households own guns.
Sam’s already seconded this, but I wanna make it a third. That is exactly right.
The problem is that kids do not recognize that there will be consequences to their actions, mostly because the establishment for the last couple decades has been more concerned with making excuses for bad behavior than with handing out consequences.
I was severely bullied when I was in school. I also grew up in a house with an outright arsenal that was not kept locked. And you know what? The thought of taking one of those guns and busting a cap in the ass of my bulliers (is that a word?) never once entered my mind. It was simply not an option to even be considered.
It seems to me that the kids who do this kind of thing honestly have no fucking clue about what “kill” really means, or what guns really do. Even when there are guns at home, regardless of quantity, they’re constantly told that the guns are a big “no-no”, something to keep their hands off and stay away from. They’re not properly exposed to the weapons, not taught how to use and handle them.
When I was as young as eight years old, my dad taught me how to shoot, how to handle a weapon properly, gun safety, etc. And he demonstrated for me the damage a gun can do by shooting rabbits out behind our house. In other words, I was taught to have a healthy respect for guns. Until you’ve actually seen something die from a gunshot, you can’t appreciate the power of these weapons. Thanks to my dad’s training me, I was fully aware of what I was dealing with when I handled a gun. And so, as I said before, using one of those guns against another human being simply wasn’t an option.
And I agree with what someone else said - schools need to start doing something about bullies.
I wanna make clear that although I quoted you specifically P_T_, it was not my intent to single you out with my “Fuck You” remark. There are plenty of others in this thread using the same language in this thread. They are also using incorrectly, in my opinion, and my comments extend equally to them.
First of all, you wouldn’t be the first to say “Fuck you” to me today, but that’s not really relevant. My point is that 20 guns is a tad excessive for a normal or average family. Don’t think I’m anti-gun. I own three hunting rifles and a shotgun, as well as a shitload of archery equipment. I wouldn’t consider myself normal about the archery equipment. The difference to me, and you thirded(sp) it, I’ll fourth it. The mother saw guns in the van, but that didn’t alert her or even cause her pause? You can’t possibly tell me that’s normal.
I think we need to replace ‘normal’ with ‘common’ in this argument.
Ah, this is exactly what I wanted to say.