A New School Year Brings More Weapons

As of this writing, there have been at least 225 reported weapons incidents in South Carolina public and private schools during the last four school years alone.

Content warning: descriptions of violence.

A few years back, a school colleague handed me something I couldn’t immediately identify and told me it was for my wife, who was then a teacher at a neighboring school. It was tan and heavy, with a surface texture like pantyhose. It was, he told me, a bulletproof garment designed to fit into a handbag.

During my last year as a teacher, one of our school days was interrupted by a mysterious message telling us to remain in class and keep students out of the hallways. We later learned that a student had stabbed another student repeatedly in the hallway. One of my coworkers described being covered in blood after helping the student who was stabbed.

During the first week of the present school year, three different students brought weapons— two knives and one gun— into the high school where my wife used to work. At least one of these weapons made it past the school metal detector without setting it off.

And as most schools entered their first or s…