East Kentwood High School on lock down at this hour (persons with gun reported NEAR school)

WOOD-TV ^ | 10/16/03

[cruiserman]

Last week I saw a kid walking by a local public school with a rifle on his shoulder. No one thought to call the cops AFAIK. Even in big city Boise things are different, I suppose.

[Possenti]

And, our homeschool has multiple firearms stored on-site....

Same with my homeschool - plus a big, hairy German Shepherd patrolling the campus. Public-schoolers only dream of having such a safe learning enviornment. "It's for the chilllldrun!"

[El Gato]

We used to hunt pheasant back in the 60's in a posted field near there. Maybe somebody finally turned us in!

Or somebody else was doing or, heading out to do, the same thing. When I was 15, a bunch of us roded from 2 to 5 miles through the city, on arterial streets for the most part, on our way to hunting a couple of miles outside of town. Nobody batted an eye. (I could have just gone across one of those streets if the place hadn't been the university "lab" farm, and thus off-limits. There were pheasants there though, and in the cover along the railroad tracks on one side of it too. However the tracks were in the city, the farm was not at that time (it's a housing developement and park now, the university traded it to a developer for a bigger piece of land farther out) and discharging a firearm within the city limits, and not at gun range, was and is illegal.

Now kids would probably get hauled off to Juve for having cased shotguns on their bicycles, and a couple of ours weren't even cased. They may even have been loaded for all I know, although mine certainly wasn't.

[El Gato]

roded <== rode. I guess it's time to hit the rack.

[TERMINATTOR]

They should pass a law requiring all robbers to carry LOW powered rifles, so the chillrunn won't have to be locked down.

It's for the Chillrruun!

Molon Labe!

[FourPeas]

From today's Grand Rapids Press:

THE 911 CALL from East Kentwood High School

Friday, October 17, 2003

Following are portions of a transcript of a 911 call.

Dispatcher: "Kent County 911"

Caller: "I hope it's worthy of 911 ... (Reports seeing two young men walking into East Kentwood High School) "with a pistol."

Dispatcher: "Where in the school did they go?

Caller: "They walked into the main entrance. It was in their pocket. I saw them playing with it as they walked down the street, and when they got to the high school they put it in their pocket." (He then described the two men as in their late teens and gave a further description of the weapon.) "It might be a pellet or a BB gun. ... If it wasn't a BB gun, it's a very small pellet gun. (He then told police he had hear the sound of a gun clicking.) "They didn't seem to have any intentions. The gun going into school kind of concerns me. ..."

Dispatcher: "I think over 30 units right now are responding to the school."

Caller: "I didn't expect that....

Dispatcher: "We take these calls pretty seriously."

Caller: "They didn't look hostile, they just looked like two stupid kids that shouldn't be carrying a gun."

Dispatcher: "It's a school. Anytime you put a thousand lives at risk by some stupid act, you get a full response."

[FourPeas]

Ping to #26.

[Imal]

Sounds like the caller did the right thing.

In light of the "rash" of school shootings we've endured over the past ten years or so, I can't say that a heavy response is the wrong thing, either.