SPALDING COUNTY, Ga. -- Parents of three students facing expulsion say they'll appeal the punishment.

Three seventh-grade friends, Andre Bussey, Alfred Burns and Darius Allen admit they made a mistake. Allen brought a BB gun onto a Cowan Road Middle School bus. Burns and Bussey said they touched the gun.

When Spalding County school administrators found out, the three were expelled.

Allen said he got the idea after a class discussion that the teacher admitted to in a statement to the principal. The teacher said the subject of guns came up in class.

The principal suspended Allen and a school tribunal kicked him out of the school system. Bussey and Burns were expelled for a year and a half for touching the gun.

Their parents are upset and do not think the punishment fits the crime. "And just being put out of school for just touching a gun, I don't think that fair at all," said Burns' mother Audrey Hightower.

A school spokesman said the boys committed a serious violation and stand behind the punishment.