Posted on 10/09/2006 9:47:46 AM PDT by MeneMeneTekelUpharsin
JOPLIN, Mo. — A 13-year-old student fired an AK-47 inside his middle school this morning after confronting two others students and his principal, but no one was injured, authorities said. The student was wearing a mask and pointed the assault rifle at Principal Steve Gilbreth, Assistant Superintendent Steve Doerr and two students, saying, "not to make me do this," Superintendent Jim Simpson said. Simpson said the teen then fired a shot into the ceiling, breaking a water pipe, and said again, "Please don't make me do this."
"It was a very close call," Simpson said. Doerr and Gilbreth persuaded the student to leave the building, where he was confronted by two police officers with weapons drawn. The student dropped the rifle and was taken into custody, Simpson said. The student's identity was not released. Joplin police Officer Curt Farmer said officers found a note in the student's backpack indicating that he had placed an explosive in the school, which has about 700 students. Students in the school were moved to nearby Joplin Memorial Hall, and the school was closed while officers searched the building.
The student was wearing a mask and apparently had been planning an attack for a "long time," Simpson said. He didn't elaborate and said authorities did not know whether others were involved. Joplin, which has about 40,900 residents, is in southwest Missouri, on the Kansas border about 140 miles south of Kansas City. Schools across the country have been on alert after three deadly school shootings in three states in the span of a week, and several schools have been locked down or closed entirely during the past two weeks because of threats. In Pennsylvania Amish country this morning, church bells tolled across the region in remembrance of the five young girls who were shot to death at their one-room schoolhouse one week earlier.
It's Columbus Day - a federal holiday. Why are they in school?
See post 35.
It's a song by the Boomtown Rats from the late 70s/early 80s. It was about a 16 year old girl named Brenda Ann Spencer who went on a school shooting spree:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Ann_Spencer
It's a safe bet the kid did NOT have an actual AK-47. Those are pretty hard to come by in this country, legally or otherwise. Real AK-47's are fully automatic machine guns, where you just hold the trigger down to spray bullets at a rate of hundreds of rounds per minute. The news people would have jumped all over that if the kid had a machinegun. The kid most likely had the semi-automatic replica of an AK-47 which fires only as fast as he can squeeze the trigger -- still deadly of course, but the distinction should be made.
Is it national insanity month or something? I didn't get the memo...
When you're packing an AK there aren't a whole lot of people who are going to try and stop you, at least not directly. My guess is that you could make it quite a ways openly carrying an AK before either the police or armed citizens managed to confront and stop you.
It actually sounds like the little voices in his head made him do it.
And principals should be free to exclude clearly disturbed students from the school.
It's too bad there wasn't an armed adult to take this kid out. I don't think this will be the last time he gets his name in the papers.
I'm a woman, with young children in my family who are in school- and I want the Principal, the teachers, and at least one security guard in every school ARMED and prepared to DROP anyone(even students) who appear in the building armed.
This is moronic. PROTECT the kids from this! Be prepared to protect them!
Same goes for any establishment that allows the public in- nightclubs,supermarkets,restaurants. If one person walks in with a gun, and several employees and patrons are armed, somebody takes a back-shot and ends the incident.
The kid in this school-especially after the recent Amish killings- should have been killed by someone in that school as soon as they saw the gun. They should have been prepared for copycat incidents- everyone should be prepared!
Dozens, even hundreds, being threatened by one or two people with guns could not happen if more people are armed and shoot first.
As far as I'm concerned, every adult(non-criminal) who can pass a good background and psychiatric check( which would eliminate most Muslims) SHOULD be trained to shoot, and armed as a part of daily life.
When only bad people carry guns- you get hostage situations and school shootings.
how about beating the hell out of school bullies. this should help remove the cause
At a typical union-run, tax-funded school collective, the students are taught:
What are the fruits of this philosophy being promulgated in the schools?
I'm surprised that there aren't a LOT more killings and chaos. Perhaps God, in His goodness, still protects us in spite of ourselves.
.
Oh, we're awake all right. Liberals won't let us get out of bed.
Nope.
I wouldn't necessarily call him conservative, but he's not as leftist as one would assume, either. From Wikipedia:
"Bob Geldof adopted an anti-euro stance by appearing in an advertisement against the single currency, in 2002. Geldof also criticised the European Union (EU), in 2004, for what he called its 'pathetic' response to Ethiopia's food crisis. Glenys Kinnock, an MEP (Member of the European Parliament), has accused Geldof of getting his facts wrong. During a visit to Ethiopia, Geldof also praised President George W. Bush's proposal to fight AIDS in Africa. This proposal has been criticised from aid groups, due to its heavy emphasis on Christian morality and sexual abstinence. Many on the political left have charged Geldof with hypocrisy, due to his conspicuous lack of support for causes such as the UK miners' strike (1984-1985) and the anti-war movement. In 2006, Geldof told a business conference that "Back in the 1970s there was no chance for a boy with an idea. Everything was stitched up by the unions." Some critics have also claimed that Geldof is becoming the acceptable face of euroscepticism. Geldof is also an active fathers' rights spokesperson in the United Kingdom.
In December 2005, Geldof became an adviser on global poverty to the British Conservative Party. He stated, however, that he was uninterested in party politics, and would continue to 'shake hands with the devil on my left and the devil on my right,' in order to achieve results."
The kids who commit violent crimes while on multiple psychoactive drugs are on the drugs BECAUSE they were already severely messed up. Claiming a causative relationship here is like claiming that keeping a record on criminals' past convictions causes them to commit more crimes, since criminals disproportionately have criminal records. These kids have psych records because they were psycho BEFORE they started amassing their psych records.
The closest plausible thing to a causative connection is that medicating psychologically disturbed kids gives parents and school officials and others in authority a false sense of security that the kid isn't dangerous now that he's on meds. The meds are rarely that effective, and even perfectly sane and stable people tend to forget to take prescribed medication from time to time.
No wonder I'm the only one at work!
"I own one." (AK-47)
"The kids who commit violent crimes while on multiple psychoactive drugs are on the drugs BECAUSE they were already severely messed up"
Hogwash.
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