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What Do You Expect When Zero Tolerance Is Coded into Law?

Georgia State Representative Ed Setzler says he’s fed up with students’ lives being screwed up with criminal charges over normal childhood things, such as making it a felony “if you drive your car onto any school campus with a Swiss Army knife in your trunk or glove compartment” without benefit of a state-issued concealed weapon permit. He cited the case of Cody Chitwood of Marietta, and an Alatoona High School student who had a rescue knife in his car for emergencies. Therefore, “I plan to introduce legislation that allows knives in cars on campus, both for students and adults,” Setzler says, since “we trust a 16-year-old to drive a 5,000 pound car onto a high school campus and at 70 mph on I-75 but don’t trust them with a 3-inch lock blade knife in their glove box is madness!” It’s not just students who are at risk, he says. “How many Cobb [County] parents committed this felony on Friday night when they parked their knife-bearing minivan on campus for a game?” Still, he expects it won’t be a slam dunk, since “some educational group who is looking out for the ‘well being of children’ will oppose me on this.” (RC/Marietta Daily Journal) ...Already forming: School Administrators Against Common Sense.