Posted on 02/04/2009 3:54:39 AM PST by naturalman1975
TWO eight-year-old boys uncovered a cache of weapons hidden at a Gold Coast school before firing one of the high-powered rifles into the playground.
Furious parents of students from Musgrave Hills State School claim the school was told of the discovery two days earlier but did nothing. Year 4 student Talison Thomson said staff did not believe him when he first reported finding a firearm on the school grounds, but they changed their minds when he later went back with a bullet and complained of pain from ringing in his ears after a mate fired one of the weapons.
He said he and a friend had been exploring under one of the buildings on Monday when they found what turned out to be a cache of weapons wrapped in a hessian bag and covered in dirt.
The next day they assembled one of the rifles and fired a round into the ground.
His horrified mother Trinity said it was miraculous no one had been killed.
"If the bullet had gone into the air, or into a classroom, we could have been burying someone," she said.
She also was appalled at the school's handling of the matter.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.au ...
Of course, they did. After all, their teachers didn't do anything when they told them about the guns, so they'd assume it was OK.
I'm a teacher, myself, and if my students came to me and told me they'd found guns under the school, I'd be sceptical.
BUT I'D STILL CHECK!
Also, once again, it is interesting to see what the media calls 'high-powered rifles'.
“If the bullet had gone into the air, .... we could have been burying someone,” she said.
____
Wasn’t there a Mythbusters episode on this?
I don’t think she’s talking about firing it up - I think she’s talking about if it had gone anywhere except into the ground - and it’s not a minor concern. If that boy had pointed the weapon at a friend or merely fired it randomly across the playground, it could have been tragic.
cache of weapons?
Hmmmm... I kind of thought there might be 75-80 evil guns, or so.
I guess two just barely qualifies as a cache... police called it a cache of weapons and ammunition which is somewhat more accurate.
Yes, there was.
A bullet fired straight up will lose it’s velocity eventually and fall to earth at the normal speed of a falling object, tumbling as it goes and will hit whatever it strikes with a lot less force (I’d said that of a pebble the same size and weight dropped from the same distance, yet another episode from Mythbusters as well, can a penny kill if dropped off the empire state building).
Quantity is not necessary.
From Online Dictionary:
“Cache
Cache\, n. [F., a hiding place, fr. cacher to conceal, to hide.] A hole in the ground, or hiding place, for concealing and preserving provisions which it is inconvenient to carry.”
It’s disturbing to me that firearms are so demonized that the mere presence of them “on school grounds” is cause to have to begin psychological counseling for students that didn’t even know they were there. They should be concerned, of course, about the person, or persons that might have been caching them there in preparation for a shooting spree.
Boy was I misled by the opening sentence. I had an image of kids scrambling and it turns out all they did was fire into the ground. Nice writing....
I don’t know about the US, but here they bring the counselors into schools for anything, no matter how minor it is.
Why did I know someone would post this?
I know, I know... read my post... they made it sound like a gazillion... geez
“If the bullet had gone into the air, .... we could have been burying someone,” she said.
____
What was a person doing up in the air?
Yeah I was about to comment on the fact that every gun has to be described as “deadly high-powered semi-AUTOMATIC”...it’s a shame they never seem to come across the “low-powered” rifles.
Then I read the article. A .22LR and a pistol-caliber “rifle”. The two categories of guns that manage to turn rifles into non-rifles. These would have about 1/4 and 1/20th or less the power of your everyday deer rifle.
The two possible scenarios where a rifles would be considered low- and extra-low-powered and they still get the evil, scary description...
Couldn't find the toggles on the parachute. (Obscure reference to sloppy writing on yesterday's thread about skydiving.)
Two rifles is a cache?
Bwhaha!
Truly pathetic how far journalism has fallen.
The Chetnian attack on the school was started when the perps took out weapons that were cached beneath floorboards in the school. It is prudent to take weapons caches on school property seriously.
I had a cousin who used a .357 Winchester to hunt hogs with many years ago. Barely adequate for the task and not what I would call "high powered".
One wonders how many other weapons are planted in the fertile soil of Australia.
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