Earlier today, I wrote about a report talking about “school shootings.” That’s in quotes because their definition seems to be a little broad. Everytown, which issued the report, presented the data uncritically and as the result of people just not locking up their guns.

However, as I noted there, many of these incidents seem to happen in anti-gun areas.

Here is a prime example:

Police in Illinois say that a high school student was arrested on Thursday after allegedly bringing a loaded gun to school.

The incident happened at Wauconda High School when police notified school staff prior to dismissal that there was a possible weapon in the building, according to FOX 32.

Shortly after notifying school staff about the possible weapon, the Wauconda High School resource officer and staff at the school took a male student into custody. A loaded handgun was found in the student’s possession after a search.

Of course, there’s no mention of how the student obtained the firearm in the first place. There doesn’t appear to have been a specific threat to other students or staff, thankfully.

Yet Wauconda is a suburb of Chicago, one of the most anti-gun regions of the country.

Stuff like this isn’t happening in the rural South. It’s not happening in small-town Missouri or Texas. It’s happening close to major cities where anti-gun sentiment is high.

That’s fascinating, really, and it also suggests that at least some of these students aren’t grabbing their parents’ unsecured firearm and slipping it into their backpacks. It’s suggestive that maybe, just maybe, they’re getting it via other illegal means.

I say “other” here because taking something without permission, even if your parents own it, is still theft.

Now, this particular community isn’t known for gang activity. It’s a city of 14,000 people and they’ve got a whole 75 gang members. But its proximity to Chicago alone raises all kinds of possibilities as to how the student could obtain a weapon without taking it from Mom and Dad.

Unfortunately, we’re unlikely to find out much of anything. The student is a juvenile and they rarely release any information on juvenile offenders, especially when they’re not accused of some kind of capital crime, which this isn’t.

But it also illustrates just how little we know about these incidents, which ties back to my earlier post about the Everytown report. If we know so little, how do they know so much?

The answer, of course, is they don’t.

What we do know, however, is that these things happen in anti-gun regions of the country. We can make educated guesses as to why that’s the case–people not feeling free to discuss responsible gun ownership outside of a gun control context, for example–but we don’t actually know.

It’s why any study or report needs to be questioned. They all should be looked at critically and have to be defended. Otherwise, particularly when the mainstream media falls down on the job like they did on this one.

Especially when it’s happening in anti-gun enclaves.