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Saturday, March 10, 2018

Nobody Knows How Many Kids Get Caught With Guns in School. Here’s Why.

One day after a Florida teenager walked into his former high school and carried out one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history, at least seven other teens across the country walked into school with a gun.

The firearms were seized without harm in Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Missouri and Texas, according to local news reports. Such incidents fuel the widespread fear that students often bring guns to school. But there’s no way to tell if this is true. There is no good data.

Because of lax reporting by schools and lax oversight by state and federal authorities — and despite federal law — it’s nearly impossible to say just how many students get caught taking firearms into public schools each year.

When a student is caught with a gun at school, the 1994 Gun-Free Schools Act requires schools to report the incident to the school district, which is supposed to pass the information along to state education officials, who then are supposed to send it to the U.S. Department of Education. The idea behind the reporting requirement is to make it possible to detect trends and inform policymakers as they seek to address the problem.

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Most are probably gang/drug related and not some lunatick out to kill everyone in sight.

Anonymous said...

Where are these kids getting the guns? Answer: Off the streets from gang members who just used it to shoot someone and now it is "hot", from addicts who need cash for a fix, from thugs that just broke into a house and stole it. Not from legal means like sporting good stores. Wake up people, tougher gun control is not going to stop sales on the street.