Basic Trope: A student or other character brings a weapon to an educational institution or facility.
- Straight: Bob brings a pistol to his school.
- Exaggerated:
- It's one among many weapons he brings to school. He also brings 16 knives, 14 grenades, 9 assault rifles, 7 shotguns, and 2 million bullets!
- Every character, including the principal, teachers, students, and guests, brings guns to school.
- Downplayed: Bob brings a cap gun or a water pistol to school, or any gun replica.
- Justified:
- Bob was bullied by his classmates, so he wanted to take revenge on them by attacking them with a weapon.
- Bob was playing too many violent video games, or in an alternate case, accessed too much violent media.
- Bob goes to a school which teaches about using guns.
- Bob wound up awakening his soul-gun. Unfortunately that means he cannot remove it from his person and he doesn't know how to reabsorb it yet.
- Subverted: Bob pulls out something like a pistol, but it turns out he only packed a harmless object...
- Double Subverted: ...For his school project. Bob then pulls out his pistol.
- Parodied:
- Bob brings a gun to school as part of his Eric Harris costume for Halloween.
- The "gun" turns out to be a rather crappy cardboard cutout to the point it's completely obvious, yet security tackles Bob's ass anyway even though it couldn't even be used as a weapon.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob pulls out something like a pistol, but it turns out he was only packing a harmless object... for his school project. He then pulls out his pistol... only for it to be just a water gun as part of a prank.
- Averted: Bob doesn't bring a weapon to school.
- Enforced: The writer has to include a plot line in which a student brings a gun to school due to a rise in school shootings in Real Life.
- Lampshaded: Bob brings a pistol to his school, and a student says "Oh look, Bob's trying to be another edgy Columbine imitator. He probably doesn't even know how to fire that thing".
- Invoked: Bob's school secretly has him bring an unloaded gun to school, so the students can safely have the experience of being at a school during a mass shooting.
- Exploited:
- Bob brings a gun to school, so he can get in trouble and thus receive attention.
- Bob plants a gun on Eric's locker and calls the police, knowing that "suspected school shooter" will give Eric an even more inescapable karmic stigma over that of "known bully".
- Defied:
- Bob knows that he would get in trouble with both the school and the law, so he leaves it at home.
- School security catches on and busts Bob before he can actually use the weapon.
- Discussed: "Bob is always quiet and suspicious. I wouldn't be surprised if he brought a gun to school one day."
- Conversed: "A lot of the time, bullied kids like Bob bring guns to school and kill people with them."
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