Experts weigh in on two guns being found at two different East Baton Rouge high schools
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BATON ROUGE - After deputies recovered two weapons from East Baton Rouge Parish Public School students on Thursday, gun experts talked to WBRZ about the incident.
Deputies took one gun from a student at McKinley High School and another from a student at Belaire High School.
According to the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office, a 16-year-old 10th grader at McKinley High School had a .40 caliber pistol with an installed switch to make the weapon fully automatic. School administrators discovered the weapon in the student's book bag along with a separate loaded magazine.
The student was booked into juvenile detention for illegally carrying a firearm in a firearm-free zone and unlawful handling of a machine gun. The weapon was reported missing from another parish.
Another student at Belaire High School allegedly was found in possession of a .45 caliber pistol. It was found unloaded in the student's locker. The student was booked into juvenile detention for illegal carrying of a firearm in a firearm-free zone and juvenile in possession of a firearm.
Deputies are not aware of threats made against any other students in either incident.
Gun experts told WBRZ they feared what could have happened at both schools. But they were even more alarmed when one of the weapons had a device called a switch that essentially turned the weapon into an automatic.
Former deputy Zathan Boutan says a Glock alone is scary enough, but to have one with a switch is even more scary. Another veteran firearms instructor, Gordon Hutchinson, agreed with Boutan saying the whole situation is frightening.
"If you ever heard one of those things going off, it's a machine gun, it'll go through a thirty-round magazine in about two seconds, it puts out so many bullets, it's amazing," Hutchinson said.
Boutan who has used the gun before, demonstrated what the weapon can do to a watermelon, in which in only three rounds the watermelon exploded. He said that if his kids were attending the school, he would want transparency from administrators on what happened and why the weapons weren't found earlier.
"Transparency: You want to be open and say, hey, look, if we made a mistake or failed at this, we're going to get better educated and get better at services to detect this. But if you're not saying anything, all you're saying is 'we didn't do our jobs, and it is none of your business.' So transparency is the key," Boutan said.
Hutchinson believes the issue can be handled.
"The only way to stop it is to send everybody that enters a school through a metal detector then you can catch the things, and that would stop them from bringing it if it was working," Hutchinson said.