Posted on 02/03/2005 11:22:59 AM PST by 2Am4Sure
GLADSTONE, Mo. -- A fifth-grader learned a lesson the hard way, and he said he was trying to do a good deed.
Frasier McCart said he was waiting for the bus when he discovered what looked like a handgun. It was bent open.
The 10-year-old put it in his bag, bent open, and rode the bus to school. He then went straight to the principal's office and turned the gun in.
He got a day of detention for bringing it onto school property.
"I'm a citizen trying to do a good deed," Frasier said. "I'm a Scout who knows that it's wrong to leave something there that might, that could be real and go off and hurt somebody."
The gun turned out to be fake.
His mother was upset about the situation.
"To me, it kind of sent the wrong message to children trying to do the right thing," said Tracy Johnson, his mother.
The school principal said he should have said something before getting onto the bus and never touched the gun.
"We want to make sure that he's safe at all times and that the other children on that bus were safe," said Marla Wasserman, the Oakwood Manor Elementary principal.
School officials chose a light punishment because he was a good kid, but he needed a message about what he did wrong, the principal said.
"Where I think that he could have made a better decision was in not saying anything to other children and causing them concern and worry," Wasserman said.
Frasier said he couldn't help it. He just couldn't keep a secret very long, but he didn't try to use it to scare the other children, and he wasn't asking for their advice. He said he knew to give it to an adult.
He said next time he found something like that, he'd give it to his mother and miss the bus.
"If it had been a condom instead of a gun he would have received an award."
no, he would have received instructions.
The eddie eagle version of this would have been that the kid told the bus driver, who then either pulled out her cellphone or flagged another adult with a cell phone and called the proper authorities (local gun dealer) and stood near the gun in question until the proper authority arrived, ensuring that another less responsible child didn't find it instead. This is, of course, assuming the bus driver didn't know how to make a gun safe and turn it in to the proper authorities, assuming it was a real gun, and not actually a toy.
It is entirely possible, though, that the kid didn't follow the EE rules because he had enough firearms knowledge through the boy scouts to know an empty gun (bent open)
who knows... there's more to this story, but the kid should have felt comfortable to tell the bus driver and trust her to do the right thing.
Oddly enough, yesterday I sat through a PUBLIC school assembly on gun safety. They showed the NRA/Eddie the Eagle video. The police officer had REAL guns and everything to show children what they looked like.
I asked why he didn't mention play guns having orange tips and he informed me that gangs have been painting their guns in order to make them look fake. They don't have to be really convincing, just enough to make a cop hesitate a moment or two. I'd never heard of that before.
And a second moral of the story is - teach kids that guns are evil, to be afraid of guns, to keep them ignorant of guns ... Ensuring that we are all helpless victims and that only government can protect us.
E Tennessee is another reason to point out those alternatives at the moment. many school districts have close to 20% flu rates at the moment, but stay open anyway. One school has flu, strep, and a rumoured scarlet fever case. Mostly, they are still open, still passing it on.
"Bent open" is a totally ambiguous phrase. If it's a semi-auto and the slide's locked back a kid could view that as "bent open" even more than he'd so view it if the slide was closed and the pistol cocked. With a revolver, like the one you show, the phrase could mean opened to exposse the rear of the cylinder.
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