Guns at School: Collateral Consequences

If your child gets caught bringing a gun to school, he or she may have trouble getting into a college and the military may not be an option. Possession of a weapon on school grounds is a felony and kids don’t realize the consequences of their actions, according to the Macon Telegraph.

The newspaper looked at a sampling of colleges in Georgia and found that most applications ask if students have ever had a felony conviction or been suspended from school. Those who answer yes have their transcripts and disciplinary records reviewed by a special panel. This doesn’t mean an automatic denial for a student with a record, but it can severely hamper his or her chances of getting in.

In the second part of this story, reporter Julie Hubbard spent a day with Ebony Shelley, a 16-year-old girl at the Macon Regional Youth Development Campus where she is serving time for bringing a loaded gun to high school.

Shelley said she felt threatened by a classmate, then made a snap decision to take her mother’s gun to school. And here’s a quote that really shows how kids think.

“I wasn’t planning on doing nothing with it,” Shelley explains to Hubbard. “I thought oh, what if I show it to (him), maybe he won’t put his hands on me no more.”

Read both reports:

Guns at school, click here.

Snap decision click here.

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