Kids with Guns at School

“The year was 1965. My brother and I attended a small country school. It was not uncommon for students to drive to school with weapons on gun-racks in pickup trucks. Rifles, shotguns, and pistols of all shapes and sizes could be found in the parking lot. Often, there was ammunition in the same vehicles, especially during hunting season. It was commonplace to go to the parking lot at recess and look at and hold a weapon, teachers and the principal, too. It was not a problem as long as the firearms stayed in the parking lot. There were never threats or jokes made about using a weapon to harm other students. It was weird, it was different, it was nonthreatening. Today, my heart stops at the thought of a student carrying a weapon to school.” John W. a local father and grandfather shared this story while discussing the topic of children, guns, and schools.

Firearm Frenzy

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention found that nearly 1,300 children are killed by firearms every year and another 5,790 are injured by gunfire. Louisiana is fourth in the nation for firearm related deaths. According to Giffords Law Center, Louisiana has no minimum age requirement to possess rifles or shotguns, but prevents children under the age of seventeen from knowingly possessing a handgun. Our state also has no laws preventing children from having access to firearms. Giffords’ Child Access Prevention document reports, “4.6 million minors in the US live in homes with at least one loaded, unlocked firearm. Many children know where their parents keep their guns and have accessed household guns — even if their parents think otherwise. 73% of children under age 10 living in homes with guns reported knowing the location of their parents’ firearms, and 36% admitted they had handled the weapons.”

Hands on Guns

Only one third of firearm owners report storing their firearms unloaded and locked, which lends itself to easy access for children to get their hands on the unlocked weapons. Kids who don’t have access to firearms at their home often look to other resources, such as friends and snooping around the homes of friends.

“Kids have expressed to me that the majority of the time they need a weapon for their protection. They will tell you that they are hot on the streets, meaning someone trying to kill them,” shared Captain Margie Davis Lias with the School Drug Task Force. “Some of the children breed a mentality that if they live in a neighborhood where there is gunfire all of the time, they should have a gun. They have stated that they can get a gun anywhere, and it is as easy as buying candy.

During our investigations, they have stated that three or four of them [kids] literally go to a neighborhood, walk down the street two or three in the morning pulling on car doors looking for unlocked vehicles. They refer to that as ‘car surfing’.”

Strictly speaking, Letgo and Craigslist prohibit the sale of firearms on their sites, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t other sites that children can access. There are also rumors of work-arounds on the popular sites including codewords and phrases.

Code Words

Most firearms obtained by children are taken from relatives’ or friends’ homes or stolen. Because most kids know they are not supposed to have guns, there are lots of pseudonyms or codewords used to discuss them. General terms: strap, burner, heat, heater, handle, grip, pipe, can, hammer, piece, tool, ratchet, blicky, thang, jawn, chrome, metal, iron, arm, banger, biscuit, flamer, get, llama, steel, nose, toner, tone, instrument, scorcher, thumper, and jammy. Other, more caliber specific terms include: m&m, four-pound, fever, Tre, deuce, Emmit Smith, and a fifty. Brand or type specific terms include: firestick, boomstick, marty-grizzle, grizzle, Elmer Fudd, Fudd, walking-stick, cane, bird, and machine.

Bring the Guns to School

Students who have been asked about having a gun on school grounds have reported various reasons why. The top reason students are bringing firearms to school was reported as protection. Students who are victims of bullying are far more likely to bring firearms to school. Some students reported wanting to use the firearm to gain respect from peers, others just wanted to show the gun to their friends, a misguided show and tell. There are also students who have access to and possession of a firearm outside of school and don’t remember to leave it when they come to school.

Local high school teacher, Mandy G. shared about a time she found a gun on her school campus, “We did sporadic book bag checks. I was on the team looking through the kids’ bags. I reached my hand in and felt the handgun. I was so scared and confused. My mind was racing as I asked the student to move toward the security guard and I had to get the gun to the principal without alerting other students to the presence of the gun. The student who brought the gun was a good kid, pretty quiet, kept to himself. I can’t help but wonder what would have happened if we hadn’t had the book check. When the student was interviewed, he said that he didn’t realize that the gun was in his book sack. He was so used to carrying the firearm outside of school that he didn’t realize he’d brought it onto campus. Oddly, we had a potential teacher on campus that day who was interviewing for a teaching position at the school. When he found out that we did book bag checks, he left stating that he felt that checking the students’ bags was a violation of their privacy.”

Although there is no way to accurately quantify the amount of guns entering school campuses, the National Center for Education Statistics reports that during the 2016-17 school year, guns were brought to or possessed on school campuses 3,300 times!

Published in Baton Rouge Parents Magazine.