Shot In The Dark: School Shooting Foiled

April 21, 2006

School Shooting Foiled

School shooting in Kansas - on the anniversary of Columbine and Hitler's birthday - foiled by internet busybodies.

Five students were arrested today in a foiled shooting plot at Riverton High School in southeast Kansas. The arrests came after details of the plan appeared on the social networking Web site MySpace.com.
Cherokee County Sheriff Steve Norman says deputies found guns,
ammunition, knives and encoded messages in the bedroom of one of the youths. The youths, all males, range in age from 16 to 18.
The sheriff says he'll ask the prosecutor to file charges of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. Norman says officials at the high school began investigating on Tuesday after learning that a threatening message had been posted on the Web site by a student.
The message discussed the significance of April 20: Adolf Hitler's birthday and the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School attack in Colorado. In that case, two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher, wounded 24 others, then took their own lives.

"Myspace.com" users reported the conspirators - who were apparently in no danger of growing up to become master criminals, blabbing about their plan on the 'net.

But it's irrelevant, of course. The school had a "Zero Tolerance for Guns" policy, plus the federal "Gun Free Schools" law. The students would have had to have left their guns 1000 feet from the building. Duh.

Posted by Mitch at April 21, 2006 07:15 AM | TrackBack

Comments

This very same scenario played out in our small town just this last February. Two boys bragged about what they were going to take guns to school and kill certain people on myspace.com and some kids turned it in. The two boys (age 14) are sitting in detention in Bemidji with ruined lives (felonies) as well as devastated families. Seemingly quiet boys who were supposedly picked on. Kids were picked on when I was young (paleolithic era) but no one killed because of it. Poor dumb fools. It's good kids are taking these threats seriously and speaking up. I have no time for tattle tales, but this is different.

What has happened to kids now? Seriously.

Posted by: Colleen at April 21, 2006 07:49 AM

Those kids never had a chance if they were also doing this because they were picked on in high school.

If you can't manage to get through high school because someone doesn't like you you'll never make it at a job or with a wife and kids.

Someone please tell them that the terrorists often call them poopie-pants.

Posted by: badda-blogger at April 21, 2006 08:59 AM

Obviously, I'm glad this worked out as well as it did. But, as you imply, it points out the stupidity of making schools victim disarmament zones.

Compare, say, the instructions that American teachers get vs. Israeli ones . . .

Posted by: Joel Rosenberg at April 21, 2006 09:00 AM

Gee, I can remember when 16-18 year old boys routinely brought their shotguns and deer rifles to school and kept them in their lockers so they could head straight for their duck blinds and deer stands after school.

It's not what's happened to kids nowadays, Colleen, it's what's happened to their parents. The lights are on but nobody's home.

Posted by: Eracus at April 21, 2006 09:39 AM

Just yesterday a co-worker and I were doing some searching and discovered that quite a few young attractive young women who work in our building have their own MySpace pages. Each one was trying to project a highly sexually charged image of herself via the site.

I was all set to dismiss MySpace as "SkankWeb" when I heard this story. Good for those users who reported the plot. And shame on me for assuming that all MySpace users think with their genitals rather than their brains.

Posted by: Dave in Pgh. at April 21, 2006 11:06 AM

Dave,

What are your coworkers' MySpace screen names? :)

Posted by: Bill C at April 21, 2006 03:24 PM

Eracus, I think it's safe to say those 16-18 year old boys you referenced didn't spend a lot of time in the basement playing Grand Theft Auto and listening to Gangsta Rap.

Posted by: Kermit at April 21, 2006 06:54 PM

I think both Eracus and Kermit are right in what they say...there are very few "grown up" parents these days, AND many children are surrounded in their daily lives by ugliness, hopelessness and degradation as the norm. No wonder they are comitting suicide on such horrific levels....but, hey! let's have more of the same or worse! Let's be "edgy" on TV shows-brave and controversial-push the stupid "envelope". Let's see just how far down the sewer humans are willing (and apparently happy) to slide.

Posted by: Colleen at April 21, 2006 10:32 PM

Posted by: Jonah at April 30, 2006 11:03 AM