A maddeningly frustrating story out of North Carolina this week, where high school student Cole Withrow, by all accounts a grade 'A' kid, found himself in serious hot water after ending up in the school parking lot with his shotgun in the back of his car, where he had left it after a trip to the skeet range over the weekend.
At that point, you kind of have three choices: ignore the problem and sweat it out all day, waiting for the other shoe to drop, jump in your car and drive home, missing some classes, or, his choice, call your mom and ask her to come pick up the contraband and bring it home. He made what most people would call the 'Right Decision' and called him mom(for the record, I would probably have gone with choice, and just sweated it out all day...that's why I had grey hair in my late 20's).
By calling his mom from the school office, some school officials overheard his confession that he had a gun 'on campus', and he Zero Tolerance kicked in, so now the young man faces felony charges, and he's been expelled from school, and won't be able to graduate with his class.
Some updates have come in, trying to put a positive spin on this: for instance, he has been offered a full scholarship to Liberty University now, where his sister went. Oh, and the school board has said he can still graduate, it will just be at the Alternative High School, not with the kids he has known most of his life.
Lame.
Lame, Lame, Lame.
Boy oh, boy...rolling the clock back 20 years...I wouldn't have made it. I usually carried a folding knife at school, and on at least three occasions, I had guns in my car at school. To get the gun range from my house, you had to drive past the school, so it made sense to bring them with me when I was getting ready for elk season. Heck...not a shotgun, but a .22 and 7mm Rem Mag...much safer. I mean...there was one time we had a choir competition at another school, and I had to adjust the guns in the back so a few other kids I was giving a ride too could put their bags in the back of the my Citation.
What a world.
Actually, even having a firearm within a thousand yards of a school, in any way, even if you have permit to carry in most states, is a state, and often federal, crime now.
ReplyDeleteNow, I didn't have guns in high school. Being raised by a single mother and you get what you get. Beside women's natural proclivities was the fact that we had little money. If I wasn't working for her, often for free (she was buying a bar), I was adding money I made elsewhere into the household. Bleh. Still, most of my friends did have guns and we went shooting often, right from school, as you did.