Des Moines police said the boy, 14, was stopped outside East High School after the school resource officer at the school was alerted by other students, the television station reported.
Sgt. Paul Parizek, a police spokesman, said the resource officer found a .40-caliber handgun and a lock-blade knife in the boy's backpack, the Des Moines Register reported.
"(The officer) was able to have a conversation with him, and he was very cooperative," Parizek said. "She was able to take him into custody without any incident.”
The student has not been identified.
Parizek said there was no reason to suspect an ongoing threat at the high school, the Register reported.
"It sounds like this is an ongoing dispute between him and another student, and he felt he needed a gun for protection," Parizek said. "That's what we're getting out of it. All he said was, 'I needed to have it.'"
In a note sent to parents, East High School Principal Leslie Morris wrote that "the learning day was uninterrupted" and that students and staff were never in danger, KCCI reported.
“The event was over so quickly, there wasn’t a need to disrupt the learning day or scare students unnecessarily,” Morris wrote.
The student will be taken to juvenile court on suspicion of carrying a concealed weapon and having a weapon on school grounds, the Register reported.
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