This week's outrage falls under the category of, "here we go again." A couple of seven-year-old Suffolk, Va. boys were recently suspended from school for violating their school's "weapons policy." Their violation? Pretending their pencils were guns.
Apparently, the two received the disciplinary action after they pointed their pencils at each other as if they were guns and made "gun noises" while playing in class.
You read that right. According to Bethanne Bradshaw of the Suffolk Public School system, "A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made."
Wendy Marshall, the mother of one of the boys, says they were pretending to be in the military and that neither felt threatened. Still, both were suspended.
There seems to be no end to these cases of "zero-tolerance" policies being applied with zero common sense. We recently reported on a seven-year-old Baltimore student who was suspended for two days for shaping a breakfast pastry into what his teacher thought looked like a gun. And then there was the recent case of another first-grader in Maryland who was suspended for holding his fingers in the shape of a gun and saying, "Pow!" while playing at school. Where does the ridiculousness end?
As we've noted over and over again, we all agree that we want our children to be safe at school, and that reasonable safety measures should be followed. But we must also exercise good judgment and discretion. When school administrators continue to allow zero-common sense enforcement of "zero-tolerance" regulations, we've bypassed reasonable and arrived at outrageous.
Outrage of the Week
Friday, May 10, 2013
Monday, April 22, 2024
On Friday, ATF provided the unpleasant surprise of yet another rulemaking to implement the noxious Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA).
Sunday, April 21, 2024
After holding late-night votes until close to midnight on Saturday, April 20th, the Colorado House passed three anti-gun bills on their third reading, including liability insurance mandates, an 11% excise tax, and a state-level permitting systems for FFL's.
Monday, April 1, 2024
NRA Members Among the Largest Class Protected from Draconian Rule
Monday, April 22, 2024
Along with “assault weapon” bans, so-called “high capacity” magazine restrictions are a cornerstone of modern gun control.
Thursday, April 18, 2024
The National Rifle Association of America (NRA) has announced a legal victory in a high-profile governance matter brought by the Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia (DCAG).