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.
According to the Socialists, he is no longer responsible for his actions. It is all the fault of the school authorities and fellow students.
I agree. How many random shootings are there in Switzerland, where every kid carries a rifle?
I loved the Boomtown Rats.
ritalin alert !
My "old school" ex-military friends say these things can fire after being stored underground, literally "UNDER ground" for months. Brush 'em off a bit, work the slide a few time, and voila, she's good to go.
BTW, even fully automatic rifles are legal if the party can provide the where-whithal for the license and fees.
Having said this, this young man's(?) AK-47 was most probably a semi-automatic rifle, available almost anywhere for under $400, MUCH less outside the USA....
Check whether he was on anti-depressants. Many shooters are.
Detention and a good beating will do.
Must have been upset because they didn't have Columbus Day off from school.
There are alot of semi-auto rifles that look like AK-47's. An AK-47 is a full automatic weapon. It was probably one of the semi-autos that this boy used. Not that this matters much.
I'm not in favor of routine Ritalin for "being a boy", and there's certainly far too much of that going on. But I've never heard of a kid who had no problems beyond "being a boy" turning violent or suicidal as a result of Ritalin. The kids who are being prescribed the cocktails of multiple psychoactive drugs have bigger problems than "being a boy". And IIRC, none of those studies had real control groups of similar boys who had been recommended for medications but had not taken them (undersatndably, since there are ethical and liability issues surrounding not medicating people who appear to need it).
If you take a seriously disturbed 8 year old boy and add large amounts of testosterone adn increased physical size/strength, you're going to get much bigger trouble than you started with. And many of these kids are started on medication cocktails before puberty, and continue on them through puberty, making it difficult to distinguish between the effects of the medications and the effects of testosterone amplification of a previously existing problem. There's also the confounding factor of whatever precipitated the initiation of multi-drug therapy -- usually something has brought things to a head, and medication is not the only change in the kid's life (e.g. he may be experiencing getting limits set and enforced for the first time). There will always be a handful of people who react badly to any given medication or combination of medications, and psychoactive drugs are no exception. But I think blaming the drugs for kids being violent or suicidal, or claiming that the drugs are overall doing more harm than good, are not supported by the evidence.
Good point.
The outcome seems to indicate clearly that this boy did not wish to be shot. When confronted by armed police, he surrendered.
Had he suspected that a teacher or principal might be armed, I don't think he would have chosen this way to "act out". As soon as his back was exposed, an armed teacher would have had an ethical and moral obligation to kill him dead on the spot. The boy knew what the police were going to do. He would have been able to figure out what an armed teacher would have to do.
Those who claim that armed teachers cannot prevent such attacks are clearly wrong.
As others have pointed out before me, police stations, gun stores, and gun shows experience very few such episodes. And when they do, few innocents suffer.
I worked across the street from that school before I retired. One day a kid ran up to me and ask me to help him. Two little punks from that school were going to beat him up. "Get out of here you litlle bastards before I kick you ass" were my words. They took off.
I called the school and talked to the office secretary. I told here what had happened. She said the students were the trouble makers who were sent out to wait for the bus before the rest of the students were released so that they didn't make trouble.
I ask if anyone supervised them. "She said no one did. Did I think that was necessary?" The school didn't seem to grasp that trouble makers will actually gang up and turn on each other.
Actually no.
Me too.
"...wearing a full-length, black, military-type black trench coat, Farmer said."
Have you ever heard of one of these?
Nah, I'm sure the kid had a class III. Isn't that the "in thing" with 13 year olds these days?
What kind of idiot kid brings "notes on how to make a bomb" rather than a real bomb when he's intent on terrorizing his school?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.