A Mysterious Glock
Wednesday - June 01, 2011
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Del.icio.usOne of the most interesting news stories in the past year reared its ugly head when police were called to Highlands Intermediate School in Pearl City. They ended up arresting a student for attempted murder after a gun he found on campus (according to initial reports) was fired before school started, narrowly missing one student and leaving another with minor injuries.
There was justified panic by many parents whose children were at school and, via cell phone, told them there was a gun on campus and it had been discharged. The principal and staff followed existing policy, which calls for school staff first and foremost to tend to safety and health concerns of the school community.
That part of the story sounds pretty accurate. But from that point on things get a little hard to swallow.
First, a .45-caliber Glock is a big and very dangerous weapon. Accounts of the incident make it sound like the pistol was found by the student on the campus. The student swears he didn’t bring the weapon to school. The police were able to ascertain that the gun belongs to someone, no relation to the student, who claimed that he lost the gun several months ago, didn’t know where it was and didn’t report it to the police.
For those who haven’t handled a firearm, a .45-caliber handgun is a big weapon. If you’ve never handled one, then it would be understandable that you wouldn’t know how to get the loaded clip out of the weapon, disengage the safety and pull the trigger. Furthermore, if you hold the Glock incorrectly, the recoil mechanism can rip off all the skin between your thumb and index finger before you know what happened. So it would be logical to assume that the youngster didn’t fire the pistol on purpose and it fired itself when it was knocked to the ground.
The only thing guaranteed in this debacle is that you haven’t heard the last of the mysterious Glock. I’m confident that by the time HPD and DOE officials get through with their investigation, everyone involved or interested in this case will realize how lucky they are no one was killed or seriously injured.
This incident also should remind gun owners that they have a common-sense responsibility to report the loss of their weapons. Our legislators might want to consider passing a law making it a felony for a gun owner to not report the loss or theft of a weapon.
No matter how you look at this story, a fully .45-caliber Glock found on a school campus is just wrong, nearly dead wrong. Hopefully, it is a lesson for all involved. It is frightening to think that a loaded weapon could mysteriously appear on a school campus.
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