OT: Two GA Football Players Arrested on Felony (BB) Gun Charges

I'm very supportive of people's rights, but these idiots should be charged. They need a lesson.

Pretty stupid.  How many people here have read every single compliance/employee handbook/rules book for their jobs?  How many even knew this was a rule?  Dumb.

Isn't the Athens PD known of making examples of UGA football players? I feel like for a while there you'd constantly hear about players being arrested for things like reckless driving because they drove a scooter on a sidewalk.

Good god give them 25 dollar citations some of these laws are ridiculous.

I have mixed feelings about this. Some of those have to do with issues of severity and with the apparent capriciousness of the wording of the statute they violated (spitballs are a violation. I mean I don't like those things but that's worth at most a written warning). It is, frankly, hard to discuss this issue without veering into politics. But while I think nailing these guys with a felony is harsh, let's remember: 1. School zone exclusion laws for guns are nearly universal. Athens may have its own statute but this is hardly unique to them. 2. BB guns and their Airsoft cousins are not precisely "firearms" but neither are they unregulated run-of-the-mill toys, and they do often fall under local gun laws. 3. The article says "marks" were made by the projectiles. So we are not talking about a $25 Airsoft pistol with plastic pellets that sting slightly if they hit you. We are, however, talking about the sort of thing that would make you very uncomfortable if a teenager were waving it around at a school that your kids went to. It's possible that these guys were just being stupid and were ignorant of the fact that they were breaking laws. Very possible. But it is also possible for reasonable people to understand why the statute exists, even if they disagree with some principles or specifics. I hope charges are significantly lowered. But I understand why this has to be an issue.

Dumb? Yes. Should they be reprimanded? Yes. Rules are rules. 

But a felony charge? I'm not too sure about that. That seems a little extreme. Granted I don't know all of the details, but I'd think a misdemeanor and some internal punishment from the football team would be sufficient.

But what do I know? 

and blew it away out of an apartment window with a little BB gun I had in the closet. I guess if anyone had caught me I would have done time at Jackson.

This should not be considered a crime unless it was shot at a person or animal. Also, there is no way the felony charges will not be downgraded to misdemeanors, if you can even consider this a misdemeanor. If anything, it should be just a petit offense, unless it is against school laws/rules.

On the mean streets of Plymouth, MI, in the 80's we would routinely have BB gun wars that closely resemble today's paint ball games. A dozen kids running down the street and between houses firing BB gun rifles at each other. Parents barely looked up from their newspaper and Barney Fife certainly didn't get involved. This "news" out of GA is a massive overreaction.

The South Quad bottle rocket wars are probably not OK anymore, no?