An armed guard at a Georgia middle school disarmed a student who had opened fire, wounding one person.

A student opened fire at his middle school Thursday afternoon, wounding a 14-year-old in the neck before an armed officer working at the school was able to get the gun away, police said.

Multiple shots were fired in the courtyard of Price Middle School just south of downtown about 1:50 p.m. and the one boy was hit, Atlanta Police Chief George Turner said. In the aftermath, a teacher received minor cuts, he said.

The wounded boy was taken "alert, conscious and breathing" to Grady Memorial Hospital, said police spokesman Carlos Campos. Grady Heath System Spokeswoman Denise Simpson said the teen had been discharged from the hospital Thursday night. Campos said charges against the shooter were pending.

Police swarmed the school of about 400 students after reports of the shooting while a crowd of anxious parents gathered in the streets, awaiting word on their children. Students were kept at the locked-down school for more than two hours before being dismissed.

Investigators believe the shooting was not random and that something occurred between the two students that may have led to it.

Schools Superintendent Erroll Davis said the school does have metal detectors.

"The obvious question is how did this get past a metal detector?" Davis asked about the gun. "That's something we do not know yet."

The armed resource officer who took the gun away was off-duty and at the school, but police didn't release details on him or whether he is regularly at Price. Since 20 children and six adults were shot to death at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in December, calls for armed officers in every school have resonated across the country.

Needless to say, the guard did his job and despite lax security that allowed a gun on to school grounds, performed heroically.

Atlanta's mayor, Kasim Reed, didn't mention the heroics of the guard:

"Gun violence in and around our schools is simply unconscionable and must end," Reed said. "Too many young people are being harmed, and too many families are suffering from unimaginable and unnecessary grief."

The guard will be disappeared from the story because his actions don't fit the narrative. It will be forgotten how many lives he may have saved, and how his presence proved the efficacy of hiring armed security for our schools.