The reason I wondered if this was hysteria was because the kids apparently did nothing but a hand off in the parking lot AFTER school let out.
Is that foolish? Probably. But it just seems to me that a proper course would have been to question the kids, find out what was going on and then, if there's nothing more to the story, give them a good tongue lashing and maybe a couple days detention or suspension.
Instead, these kids had their names in the papers as having been arrested and they have to answer "yes" on a job application to having been arrested for perhaps the rest of their lives. All over something that might have been an innocent mistake in a rural community where kids hunt (you'll notice that rifle was owned by one of the kids, this wasnt a stolen handgun or something).
Granted, there may be more to story, and I conceded that in my initial post. It just seems to me that, if there isn't anything more, this is the type of case where someone could be let off with a warning and school suspension, not arrest.
I agree. But everyone, even high school kids, knows that it's against the law to take a gun onto school property. When I was in school no one thought twice about having a rifle in their gun rack (of course, that's before gun racks were illegal, too). But the kids were foolish to take a rifle out of the car while on school property.