After a few days in the sights of pro-gun groups nationwide, the Wake County school board is taking the first steps to revise a policy designed to ban deadly weapons on campuses that was used to bar an East Wake High School marksmanship team from a state-supported shooting tournament.

School board members met Wednesday and asked staff members to draft changes to the weapons ban that would would allow marksmanship teams such as the one at East Wake High School to compete in off-campus shooting events.

School board member Lori Millberg, chairwoman of the board's policy committee, said the original intent of the weapons policy was to keep students safe by barring firearms, knives and other deadly weapons from school grounds. There wasn't any thought that the policy would keep school-based marksmanship teams from competing.

"That was not what the school board was seeking to bar when we wrote this policy," Millberg said.

But in late March, an East Wake principal, Sebastian Shipp, decided to bar the East Wake team from competing in the marksmanship tournament sponsored by the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission the day before the contest took place. Area superintendent Danny Barnes supported Shipp's decision.

But Barnes and Shipp interpreted the weapons ban on campus to mean students could not participate in an off-campus event sponsored by a state agency and supervised by adults certified in firearms safety. The East Wake team members were part of a school-approved club, FFA, formerly known as Future Farmers of America.

"Somebody made a bad decision trying to be politically correct," said Wes Seegars, chairman of the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission.

Barring the East Wake team from the tournament quickly became a national story for gun-rights advocates. It was the April 11 "Outrage of the Week" on the National Rifle Association's Institute for Legislative Action Web site. The topic has also been widely discussed on a host of firearms blogs across the country.

Seegars recorded a segment Wednesday for an NRA-sponsored radio show on Sirius Satellite Radio speaking against the East Wake team's exclusion from the tournament.

Millberg, the school board member who represents the district that includes East Wake, has received e-mail from as far away as Alaska asking her to reconsider the policy. "I thought it was totally cool," she said, referring to the geographical range of responses.

Millberg hopes the school staff can draft a policy that will let the East Wake team participate next year.

"This, we think, is fine," she said.

The Wake school board policy committee will review the draft policy at its next meeting May 13.