High school football season may be winding down, but if anyone thought winter sports meant a break from guns showing up at school events, Sunday night in Fishers, Indiana, served as a painful reminder. The venue may change, but the risk doesn’t.

Hamilton Southeastern High School had just wrapped up a boys varsity basketball game when chaos broke out. A fight erupted among visiting spectators. And while administrators were quick to clarify that no HSE students were involved, the trouble didn’t come from inside the roster. It came from the stands.

In the middle of the scuffle, someone noticed what no one ever wants to see at a school game. A gun in the hands of someone who shouldn’t have one.

Fishers Police and school staff reviewed the footage and realized the suspect, a juvenile, had already bolted. The school wasn’t under immediate threat, but that doesn’t exactly translate into comfort. The kid didn’t vanish for long, though. An off-duty Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy found him in a nearby neighborhood and took him into custody.

Police say the juvenile tried to stash the gun, but, because nothing stays hidden forever, it was later found on school grounds.

Both schools confirmed the same thing. This wasn’t either of their students. Instead, it was just another teenager with a firearm drifting into a school event like it’s no big deal.

He’s now accused of unlawful possession of a firearm on school property, and the Hamilton County Prosecutor’s Office will decide formal charges. But let’s not pretend this is an isolated fluke.

Because here’s the truth nobody wants to acknowledge. Gun incidents don’t care what sport is in season. If it’s Friday night football, the stands are vulnerable. If it’s a Sunday night basketball game, the gym is vulnerable. If students are gathering, families are attending, or a school building is open, someone willing to bring a gun will find their window.

Winter doesn’t cool that down.

And yet, year after year, we get administrators assuring parents there was “no ongoing threat.” Maybe technically true, but never reassuring. Not when guns keep slipping into school events, hidden in waistbands, backpacks, or, in this case, discarded somewhere on campus like a broken umbrella.

Football season ends. Basketball season begins. The calendar flips. But the pattern doesn’t change.

Until access to guns changes, expect more of the same headlines, just with different jerseys on the court.

(Source)

• Juvenile arrested after allegedly bringing gun to basketball game at Hamilton Southeastern High School