Tag Archives: toy guns

Insanity In Our Schools

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Hot Air posted an article today about a 12-year-old girl who is facing felony charges because she allegedly made a gun shape with her hand and pointed her finger at four students before pointing her finger at herself. Yes, you read that right.

The article reports:

Police hauled her out of school in handcuffs, arrested her and charged the child with a felony for threatening.

Shawnee Mission school officials said they could not discuss the case, citing privacy laws, but did say it wasn’t the district that arrested the child.

According to the Kansas City Star, the incident unfolded in a classroom at Westridge Middle School.

The person said that during a class discussion, another student asked the girl, if she could kill five people in the class, who would they be? In response, the girl allegedly pointed her finger pistol — like the ones many children use playing cops and robbers.

Because of that gesture, The Star was told, the girl was sent to Principal Jeremy McDonnell’s office, and the other students involved were also talked to. The school resource officer recommended that she be arrested, the source said. She was detained by police and later released to her mother.

It gets even worse. According to Star columnist Toriano Porter, there were two kids in the same school district who recently brought real guns to school that aren’t facing felony charges for their actions. Toriano Porter also states that pointing a finger gun at classmates and then yourself is a cry for help — not a criminal act of violence.

The article concludes:

I’m not even going to go so far as to say that this 12-year old was exhibiting a “cry for help.” She could have just been a 12-year old who wasn’t thinking that responding to a dumb question by a classmate was going to end up with her in handcuffs. What’s next? Arresting kids playing “Kiss, Marry, Kill” at lunch for making threats?

The 12-year old girl is now living in California with her grandfather, and will hopefully be able to put this incident behind her, but if the laws in Kansas need to be changed to prevent idiotic situations like this from taking place in the future, I hope legislators in the state will see to it that there are no more felony charges for finger guns in the future.

Did whoever decided to call the police on the child consider the emotional trauma to the child? If this was viewed as a cry for help, why did the authorities choose to make the child’s emotional situation worse? I know a lot of adults who played with toy guns and toy soldiers as children who grew up to be respectable non-violent citizens. The way this child was treated is totally unacceptable–and she didn’t even have a gun!

The Government Has Entered Your Living Room

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Yesterday Breitbart.com posted a story about two students at Bristol-Plymouth Regional Technical School who have been suspended from school because of a picture taken in their living room. The picture shows Tito Velez and Jamie Pereira dressed for the school’s homecoming dance and holding Airsoft rifles. The caption below the picture, which was posted on Facebook by their father is “Homecoming 2014.”

The article reports:

School district superintendent Dr. Richard Gross said he didn’t have a problem with the Airsoft guns, and he understands free speech. However, he “takes issue with the caption below the photo that reads ‘Homecoming 2014.'” He added: “When you tie that to a school event, that’s something to be concerned about.”

Velez defended the couple’s photograph on CBS Boston, explaining that the guns are toys that shoot plastic pellets. Yet Dr. Gross said the entire homecoming dance would have been canceled had police discovered the photo prior to the start of the event. 

They are toy guns that shoot plastic pellets. If they had been nerf guns, would the students have been suspended?

The article further reports:

According to NECN.com, Pereira said, “We took [the pictures] with the Airsoft guns because that’s our hobby, and we wanted to include them.” But school officials argue that the photo caused “a disruption at the school.”

I’m sorry, but this just seems really ridiculous to me. I can understand other students asking the couple questions about the guns and about their hobby, but how did this picture cause “a disruption at the school.” I think this is just another example of the basic Massachusetts hysteria regarding guns.