Say WHAT?

I found this piece on Yahoo! News, and overall I don't have a problem with it. But THIS left my jaw on the floor:

Each day, more than 100,000 teens bring handguns to school.

No attribution for the factoid, just a baldfaced - statement.

Now, why should I believe anything else in the story?

Here's the original piece.

I think I need to ask Dr. Fow where he gets his statistics.

UPDATED: I found this link that has this attribution:

Each day more than 100,000 weapons were brought to school and approximately 40 children and youth are wounded or killed by these weapons (Children's Defense Fund, 1990).

AH! Statistics creep! The story goes from 100,000 weapons (which includes pocketknives, clubs, brass knuckles, etc.) to 100,000 handguns.

That's very much like this quote:

"And what about the more than 4,000 children who die in gun-related accidents each year? That's 11 kids a day. And we're not talking about crimes, or intentional shootings. We're talking -- or not talking enough -- about accidents." "What a few good mothers can do," Salon.com, March 13, 2000

Yup, give 'em a little information, and they'll stretch it all out of proportion to aid their agenda, and pass it on (without attribution, because "it's common knowledge") as gospel truth.