Guns at Schools?

My oldest two children, age 11 and 13, attend school at Cunningham Intermediate School in Beloit, Wisconsin. We live less than three blocks away from the school, so obviously, they walk to and from school. Unless there is an activity that I am told about beforehand, they are always home around 3:55 pm after being dismissed at 3:43.

At 4:10 today, I started calling their cell phones because they weren't home yet. I called the school and received no answer. With my 3 year old napping, I wasn't able to leave the house to check on them. I sat around the house constantly calling them.

Finally at 4:27, my daughter answered her phone. Her and her brother were almost home, but they had some bad news.

They were not dismissed on time because of a lockdown at their school.

A former student, an 8th grader, set foot on school grounds near the end of the day and showed a gun to students that were outside for gym class. The school went in to a hard lockdown at 3:41 pm, just minutes before they were supposed to be released for the day. The students were told if they had cell phones, they needed to turn them off and not notify anyone outside about what was going on so they didn't jam cell phone towers, yet the teachers were texting back and forth with each other to find out what was happening. 

Parents were not notified about any of this and no information was released until 6:49 pm when and automated phone call was sent out explaining the bare minimum of the events of the day.

After showing the gun, the child fled the area with another child. They were caught by police about six blocks away, but they did not have the weapon. There have been several posts on social media claiming the weapon was "only a bb gun". I personally don't care what kind of gun it was. The point is that it was on school grounds. (The police did eventually find the weapon and it sure was NOT a bb gun.)

My daughter was afraid to walk home. She doesn't want to return to school tomorrow. My son honestly seems like he couldn't care less. As a parent, I'm at a complete loss of what to do. There was a good outcome to these tragic events this time, but you never know when there will be a next time, and that next time, we might not be so lucky. 

What is happening to our youth that is making this even a possibility? When I was in school, we weren't worried about people shooting us, we were more worried about who was going to what dance with who. Who needed guns when we were worried about who had the most impressive CD collection? Where are the parents of these children?

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