Graduation Shooting: Two Injured At Kansas High School After ‘Knucklehead’ Discharges Gun In Sock

Two people were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries this weekend in Augusta, Kansas, after they were shot at a high school graduation ceremony. A 37-year-old man accidentally fired a semiautomatic handgun he had hidden in his sock in what police later called a "knucklehead situation," CBS News reported.

The man, whose name was not released to the media, had a permit for his gun. But no firearms are allowed in the Augusta High School football stadium, where a graduation ceremony was being held at about 2 p.m. local time Sunday. So he put the gun in his sock.

However, "it was uncomfortable for him," Tyler Brewer, Augusta's director of public safety, told the Wichita Eagle. The man "went to adjust his sock, and the weapon went off, striking him in the foot,” Brewer added.

The bullet bounced off the bleachers and hit a 28-year-old woman sitting nearby. A witness told KWCH the victim's calf was "bleeding like crazy" before she was transported to a nearby medical center.

Garrett Tipton, 17, told KSNT the shooting sounded like "a really loud firework." But the Eagle reported that because the gun was small, not everyone in the football stadium heard the shot. The graduation ceremony proceeded as scheduled.

Brewer told the Associated Press the incident was a "knucklehead situation."

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill last year allowing state residents over 21 to carry concealed weapons without undergoing mandatory training or obtaining permits. Brownback said carrying a gun is a constitutional right that shouldn't require getting a "permission slip from the government," according to the Kansas City Star.

Everytown, a nonprofit gun control advocacy group, states on its website that there has been at least one school shooting a week since 2013. It lists 23 shootings so far this year — not including Sunday's incident.