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I don’t know about you, but when I was in high school and college, there was a good chance that if you rooted through the glove box or center console of my truck, you could find a knife. Why? Because outdoorsmen carry knives, and I don’t know how many times I’d go straight from class to a lake or river. What I certainly never did was bring that knife into class or into the school building. That’s just common sense, and 17-year-old avid angler Cody Chitwood seems to possess that same common sense. But when drug-sniffing dogs flagged his car parked in the lot of Georgia’s Lassier High School where he’s a student, the police proceeded to search the vehicle. They found no drugs, but a couple knives they discovered in Chitwood’s tackle box now have him facing up to ten years in prison, and a $10,000 fine. The arrest is part of Georgia’s zero tolerance policy on weapons in school.

From the story on Opposingviews.com:

“It’s pretty ridiculous,” said Chitwood, who attends Lassier High School in Cobb County in a statement to the Marietta Daily Journal. “I have an attorney and I’m hoping to get the felony dropped so I can still get in the Air Force.”

“The public expects the same good common sense they use every day of their lives to apply to the laws of our state, and we as legislators seek nothing less,” Republican state Rep. Ed Setzler said to the The Marietta Daily Journal. “We’ll inspect the current state of the law, but our school leaders don’t like it, our law enforcement doesn’t like it, and we’re finding out the citizens who understand the current state of the law certainly don’t like it.”

What do you think? Considering the way things are in this day and age, should Chitwood have been smart enough to leave the knives home, or is the whole thing just completely blown out of proportion?