Guest Post by Jonathan Turley
We recently discussed the absurd case of a school sending police to the home of a 12-year-old boy in Colorado because he showed a toy gun inside his own home. Despite teaching such children virtually, the school treated the toy gun as a violation of “in school” policies. Now Ka Mauri Harrison, 9, who attends Woodmere Elementary in Harvey, has been suspended because a teacher spotted a BB gun in his room. As with the Colorado case, Louisiana school officials defended this new case of virtual insanity.
NOLA.com reported that Ka Mauri was suspended for six days after his teacher spotted a BB gun in his bedroom. He was taking a virtual class on Sept. 11 when his younger brother came bursting into the room and tripped over the BB gun. Ka Mauri was taking an English test, so he quickly grabbed the BB gun and placed it “by his side” and continued the test. When the teacher called him out, Ka Mauri did not answer because his sound was muted during the test. As a result, he was suspended for having a gun “in school.”
The Louisiana Department of Education School Behavior Report listed the incident as “possesses weapons prohibited under federal law.” Obviously, there is nothing prohibited in the possession of a bb gun, which is not even defined as a “firearm” since it is air-powered. (The term “firearm” is defined in the Gun Control Act of 1968, 18 U.S.C. Section 921(a)(3), to include “(A) any weapon (including a starter gun), which will, or is designed to or may readily be converted to expel a projectile by the action of an explosive.) It does meet the definition of a weapon or simulated weapon under most school policies. However, those policies were written for the appearance of such toys or weapons in school, not in the home where they are perfectly lawful.
Like many thousands of parents, Nyron Harrison told NOLA.com that he bought a BB gun and taught his son to use it safely. It was not loaded and Ka Mauri appears to have taken possession to keep it away from his younger brother and then continued with his test. Even if the teacher had thought it might be a firearm and appropriately called the police for the child’s safety, it was shown not to be a firearm and there was no need for this suspension.
We have been dealing with the insanity of zero tolerance rules for years. Here is a prior column on the subject (and here). Children have been suspended or expelled for drawing stick figures or wearing military hats or bringing Legos shaped like guns or even having Danish in the shape of a gun. Various criminal and disciplinary cases were opened for finger guns. Despite the public outcry over the completely irrational and abusive application of zero tolerance rules, administrators and teachers continue to apply them blindly. If you do not have to exercise judgment, you can never been blamed for any failure. Conversely, even when the public outcry results in a reversal, teachers and administrators never seem punished with the same vigor for showing no judgment or logic in punishing a child.
How is suspension in the best interest of him or the school? It is not. It is the same blind and callous application of zero tolerance rules that has been denounced for years without no apparent impact on school officials. A simple call to the parents would have sufficed to ask them to be sure that the bb gun is not displayed. Ka Mauri’s parents seem entirely responsible and responsive in these media accounts. Instead of addressing this issue with a modicum of restraint and proportionality, the interest of the child were discarded in a thoughtless and harmful bureaucratic response. There is a need for discipline in this case but it is not Ka Mauri who warrants such action.
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WTF? Can the argument for home schooling get any louder?
There’s no “Virtual” about it. It’s blatant insanity.
Some people have an irrational fear of guns.
Too many people are irrationally insane !
Hoplophobia
….and they’re always Democrats!
Big Brother is listening !
Big Brother is watching !
Big Brother is reading everything and knows what you wrote !
Big Brother Loves you !
Big Brother must punish you to re-educate you !
Only then will you show love for Big Brother by your obedience !
DEATH TO BIG BROTHER AND ALL WHO FOLLOW HIM !
Refuse & Resist !
Government school sphincters like the “teacher” in this case are the dregs of the American “education” system. For anyone other than this brain-dead zipperhead, such an “incident” should have gone like this:
Teacher: “Little Johnny, is that a real gun by the desk or is it a BB gun?”
Little Johnny: “It’s a BB gun my dad got me.”
Teacher: “Ok, let’s work on our multiplication tables.”
Instead we get this utterly ludicrous sequence of events.
The kid could have been SWATTED and shot by an AGW.
I’m a high school teacher, and with me it would have been:
Me “Little Johnny, what kind of BB gun is that?”
Little Johnny “A Red Ryder”
Me “Cool, keep practicing with it. I’d love to see a target tomorrow. Maybe you can move up to a good 22 soon. Now, where were we?”
Of course, being a vocational teacher, I actually teach useful hands-on skills, so I wouldn’t be doing the online video thing.
It shouldn’t matter if it was a real gun or a BB gun.
This is all designed to make children afraid of firearms of any kind, hoping they will carry that fear into adulthood and the voting booth. Just more indoctrination by government stooges.
This is just a warmup for the time coming when we will have to assemble in our house and bow to the Anti Christ using skype.
Not me.
Nor me, pastor.
Nor me! I’m not scared of death because I know where I’m going afterwards and that’s the most important thing. We must live in this world with evil men until we return to our Father.
Amen sister.
You will be back, dear. Always time to get it right this time. You are not your body.
Are you a Hindu,Bigfoot?
Realist, VV. Can’t you feel it, the remote chance that the Universe is not intelligent? Our consciousness is not of nature, but of the spirit. In nature things die, but the spirit is immortal.
We will be around as nature beings as long as it takes to know we are not nature beings, but godly beings.
“What is it that is conscious, and knows that it is conscious?” Harold Percival
Home Schooling is the only sane response to the cesspools of deranged political correctness and communist ideology that Public Schools have become.
The best thing that happened during the Scamdemic was the closing of public schools. A lot of parents are actually seeing what their kids are being taught and don’t like it. That’s a good thing.
It’s a darn good thing the boy didn’t have a pen ( horrors) at his at-home-school desk:
and pencils , if utilized incorrectly, can cause lead poisoning.
But pencils today use graphite, not lead.
Well, it’s now official. The inmates are now in full control of the asylum. If they administered an I.Q. test to them, it’s highly doubtful the needle would even budge.
That Trotsky comes of a strong mercantile strain, is very significant. I t explains in a word why he is at the head of this movement. He has the training and business sense and acumen that is so conspicuously absent in the ranks of his organization.
This total lack of any practical ability – without which even a pirate crew could not hold together overnight –
explains why it is that the control of the Bolsheviki and all their high offices are in the hands of Jews, the prevailing element of whom are from New York.
Older guys will recall the day when Winchester and Remington built sought after firearms. Nowadays, not so much because of the political climate and economic raping certain arms companies have to deal with. I used to own Remington and Winchester /USRAC rifles.
The key phrase is “used to”. Over the years quality declined. Bad management, the spread of hostile urban progressivism, and poor workmanship are just a few major reasons companies like Remington, Colt, and USRAC are “has beens”.
Thirty bucks for a .22 rifle? Those were the days. The Remington Model 512 was originally produced from the 40’s to the 60’s and that surely dates the ad from the posted article.
The biggest mistake in this is the parents allowing the child to take online lessons from the public school system. There are plenty of online home schooling sites. They should find one.
Anyone that has a child suspended by the .gov school should automatically know it is time to home school. F the teacher and the government organ they are part of.