This past Monday, Buchtel High School in Akron, Ohio went into lockdown after a 17-year-old girl was caught trying to bring a loaded 9mm pistol into the building. A deputy spotted the weapon during a security screening and, in a rare win for the ‘good guy with a metal detector’ strategy, the gun was confiscated before anyone got hurt.
Yes, the system ‘worked’ this time, but let’s not pretend this is a solution. Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut. The fact that we’re relying on security screenings at schools, to intercept firearms brought in by students, isn’t something to celebrate. It’s an indictment. It’s the logical endpoint of a country that would rather turn classrooms into TSA checkpoints than ask the hard question. Where the hell did a 17-year-old get a loaded handgun in the first place?
She’s now facing a fourth-degree felony for illegal conveyance of a deadly weapon in a school. She’s sitting in the Summit County Juvenile Detention Center, and the school is back to pretending this was a fluke instead of a symptom. Because that’s what we do. We treat every school lockdown, every gun in a backpack, like a one-off. Like we haven’t seen this movie a thousand times and counting.
We don’t know why she brought the gun, who it belonged to, or what might’ve happened if it wasn’t caught. But we do know this: she didn’t conjure it out of thin air. Someone owned that gun. Someone either left it unsecured or handed it over. And no one wants to talk about that part. Because if we do, we start stepping on the toes of ‘responsible gun owners™.‘ We start inching toward the idea that maybe, just maybe, access to deadly weapons needs to be regulated before the next teen with a backpack slips one past security.
Until then, we’ll keep adding more checkpoints. More scanners. More cops in schools. And we’ll call it safety while pretending not to notice the kids sitting in lockdown drills wondering which of their classmates might be next.
(Sources)
Real Crime with Trench Reynolds 
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