Magazine content is available exclusively for TIME subscribers.A GUN BAN IS SHOT DOWN
Eighteen-year-old Alfonso Lopez Jr. was just six weeks short of his high school graduation when, in March 1992, he was caught carrying a .38-cal. handgun on school grounds. Although Lopez insisted that the weapon had simply been given to him by one classmate with instructions to deliver it to another, the San Antonio, Texas, senior suddenly found himself in deep trouble. He had no money for bail, no funds to hire a lawyer and, thanks to a law Congress had passed two years earlier that banned guns within 1,000 ft. of a school, little chance of escaping a six-month prison sentence.
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