Over 1,200 Weapons Found at CT Schools in 2011-2012, Only 18 Were Guns

A recent report on the number of weapons reported at Connecticut schools (K-12) during the 2011-2012 school year shows that over 1200 weapons were brought onto school grounds but only 1.4 percent of them were firearms.

This is critical news in a state that has been at the epicenter in a fight for more gun control since the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting on December 14, 2012 and which instituted some of the most extreme gun control laws in the nation on April 4, 2013.

While these new laws were passed under the guise of making schools safer, a report in the Hartford Courant shows that the most common weapons found in schools are knives, not guns. Moreover, knives are followed by numerous other weapons, many of which are far more prevalent than guns.

Here are some numbers: 537 of CT’s 1,100 K-12 schools reported at least one instance of a weapon on campus during the 2011-2012 school year. The total figure for weapons brought on campus was 1,246. Of those weapons, more than 400 were knives, but only 18 were firearms–and some of the firearms were never brought into a building but were only considered “on campus” because they were in a student’s car being transported from a weekend skeet shooting event.

Other weapons of choice were “37 box cutters and 20 razor blades.”

Seen as percentages, knives comprised over 32 percent of all weapons brought on campus during the 2011-2012 school year, while box cutters comprised 2.9 percent, razor blades 1.6 percent, and firearms 1.4 percent.

Follow AWR Hawkins on Twitter @AWRHawkins.