NEW MISSOURI LAW TAKES AIM AT STUDENTS WITH GUNS AT SCHOOL

JEFFERSON CITY -- If Kip Kinkel had been attending a public school in Missouri, four deaths might have been averted.

Kinkel is the Oregon schoolboy who less than two months ago shot and killed his parents and then two fellow students.

While the Show-Me State has thus far escaped the horror of campus shooting rampages, law and education officials here have taken several steps to prevent such headline-making episodes. A new Missouri statute, designed to supplement earlier mandatory federal and state expulsion laws for weapons-toting students, permits authorities to detain offenders for 72 hours for a mental and emotional evaluation if they are found bringing weapons onto school property.

The state's top law enforcement official, Attorney General Jay Nixon, has urged police offices, juvenile authorities and school officials to order the three-day study even though it's not mandatory. Commenting on current statues, Nixon says, "Given the evidence of the recent shootings, I encourage all juvenile offices to act within the scope of their authority to request these evaluations."

Nixon said that the day after Kinkel took a gun to the Springfield, Ore., school he killed his parents at their home and 24 hours later shot to death two fellow students and wounded 23 others during school hours.

The Missouri evaluation statute was enacted even as Congress is considering a federal measure that calls for the same three-day evaluation period for any student found with a gun or other dangerous weapon on school property. Nixon said, "We have the capability to use this crime-fighting measure here in Missouri right now."

The nation's first significant attempt to deal with weapons being illegally brought to public schools occurred in 1994, when Congress enacted the Gun-Free School Act. It requires local educational agencies to expel from school for a period of not less than one year any student who brings a dangerous weapon onto school property. To qualify for federal funding assistance, states were required to enact such penalties, mitigated somewhat by a provision that permits local school officials to modify the expulsion rule on a case-by-case basis.

Missouri legislators immediately enacted statutes which codified the federal regulations, making them some of the most comprehensive in the nation, said a spokesman for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. Not only does the state statute require a mandatory 12-month expulsion, except when mitigated by local officials, but it adds several weapons which will also result in expelling an offender.

Classified as weapons that will result in expulsion are legislatively defined firearms, blackjacks, concealable firearms, any explosive weapon, firearm silencers, gas guns, knives, brass knuckles, machine guns, projectile weapons, rifles, shotguns, spring guns and switchblade knives. The statute says the listing can also include any weapon designed to harm a student, teacher or school employee.

Students riding school buses or attending educational activities beyond school property are also held to the gun-free regulations. The state statute does not include private schools, although students form these institutions who participate in any state or federally funded programs are covered by the congressional sanctions.

In the first school year (1996-97) the state began keeping track of the number of expulsions under federal and state statues, 318 students were ordered expelled for a 12-month period after having been found guilty of bringing a firearm or other dangerous weapon onto a school yard or school bus. Of this number, 33 were shortened to a term of less than one year by the chief administering officer of the educational institution involved.

Forty-three of the 318 expulsions were enrolled in elementary grades, 134 were in junior high school and 141 were high school students.

Expulsion totals for the school year just ended are still being compiled, said an official in the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.