ABSTRACT
Fourteen-year old Bobby was a freshman at Patrick Henry High School. He had been teased and picked on by his classmates in middle school, but now, in the larger high school, he felt smaller and more vulnerable than ever. The American public was bombarded with claims that schools were full of students carrying guns. Multiple organizations claimed the source to be the 1993 report by the National School Board Association (NSBA), but the NSBA report does not explain the basis for this number. A news report that one in twenty high school boys carried a gun in the past month sounds alarming, because in the context of a story about juvenile crime it conjures an image of a young armed criminal. The National Adolescent Student Health Survey (NASHS) researchers believed that they minimized dishonest reporting by assuring students that their answers were anonymous and that no teacher or school staff member would ever see their responses.
