Public school zero tolerance policies.

Perhaps there is an applicable statute of limitations
(unless it tolls, for the duration of the kid 's underage status).
If so, the case is screwn; if not, then thay shud go for it.

When I was a kid, many of the kids brought their guns to school.
I always brought my .38 Revolver. We never had any trouble.





David

And THAT is why some schools have a zero tolerance policy today. I honestly thought that the school was over the top until you posted that.
Are you actually serious? Is there a shred within your being that you could consider this to be in any way innapropriate, let alone dangerous?
Were your parent's morons for letting you go to school with that? Or didn't they know?
How many other nutters are there at this moment in time, strolling round school/college with a firearm?
Jeez.....

In the light of recent Supreme-Court cases, maybe the real sin of the school wasn't to confiscate this poor imitation of a gun; it was it's failure to supply students with real guns.

Think about it: Holding and bearing arms is now officially recognized as a civil right of the individual in America. The purpose of schools is to help students develop into grownups who know their civil rights and exercise them freely and competently. Shouldn't public schools adopt a policy of offering classes in marksmanship, gun safety, and the like? It would teach students what a real gun is and how it's handled, defuse the gun mystique in the juveniles' imagination, and end up making America a safer place.

Brilliant idea!

I'd love to be a teacher in one of those schools.

I'm sure you're joshing.

My son's third grade teacher carried her gun to school when she was a kid. In parts of the American West it wasn't uncommon. She rode her horse to school too.

I'm NOT in favor of kids taking guns to school and I think it should be something they get suspended for BUT it should be a real gun. Not a GI Joe gun.

I made Mo read an article in the paper the other day that said that 1 in 16 adult Oregonians have a concealed carry permit.

I told him to think about that before he mouthed off to anyone or considered getting into any kind of trouble....

I actually do think gun safety would be a good topic to cover in schools.

That illustrates that 15 of 16 adult Oregonians actually are adults. My guess is that Oregon is above the national average for adults.

I always buck against this zero tolerance malarkey, anywhere it raises its head. I always thought that it was dreamt up by lazy officials and bad managers, who love someone else to deflect the blame onto when they impose silly and unnecessary rules.
We've all heard about the warnings having to be put on coffee cups nad the like, so that the one in a million idiot who decides to gulp down a fresh brew in one can't complain or sue because there was a clear warning.

I always thought in these cases, just who the idiots are who make all the rest of us live under the cosh of silly regulations to ensure our safety, the wording of which always aimed at the lowest common denominator.

I actually began to wonder whether they really existed, or were they urban myths, started up by the powers that be to ensure we're all good little boys and girls.
Has anyone ever met an idiot who gulped down a freshly served coffee? Or who didn't know that a packet of peanuts contained nut product?

Until David's post, I was on the side of the parents in all this, but now I worry about how schools have to deal with this on a day to day basis, and how they have to cover their backs.
Imagine..."well johnny, what have yoh brought to show and tell?" and Johnny produces a magnum.

Bloody hell David. You are the reason why we all have to live like we do.

I was joshing in tone, but not in substance. Unlike Great Britain, the United States recognizes the holding and bearing of arms as a civil right. It follows straightforwardly that schools should teach children how to shoot, just as they should teach them how to write a letter to the editor, publish a newspaper, organize a protest, deny the police entry into their homes when it comes knocking without a warrant, peacibly assemble, and excercise all their other rights under the Constitution. That's what education for citizenship in a free country entails; failure to teach it is a failure of the school's civics curriculum.

If that came about, I wonder how long it would be before a Principle was sued for making a student such a proficient marksman, should another Columbine happen.

Very dangerous ground.

That is yet another of the grand conundrums for a poorly thought out system of "government".

That's a red herring. Shooting unarmed people at 20-foot range does not require any marksmanship --- nor any gun-safety skills for that matter. School shootings would not be affected, either way, by the kind of curriculum I have in mind.

At the moment. The US used to recognize the holding, raping, beating, torturing, branding of certain human beings as a civil right.

That is a non-sequitur.
I pointed out that we had no trouble.

As recently as the 1990s, I saw a news story on ABC News
qua the school where the students MUST bring guns to school.
It was about an elementary school in one of the Northwestern States,
in regard to which the local fauna had inflicted too many casualties
upon the student body approaching and leaving school.
Handguns alone were deemed not to be sufficiently powerful.
The students were required to bring shoulder-mounted weapons
in their defense. Thay showed some of the students in an
interview aged 8 to 12 blond haired n blue-eyed, who attested
(in essence) that thay arrive, put their hats on the hatrack,
their coats on the coatrack, their guns on the gun rack,
study math and geografy (not fonetic spelling)
take their stuff and go home; no trouble.

One of the zero tolerance schools with which u have now fallen in love
threw a girl out of her graduation because she had joined the US Army,
her enlistment to begin after her graduation. The school had encouraged
posing for Yearbook pictures in ways that indicate their future
post-graduate ambitions. She had posed on an Abrams battle tank
(a very fine tank) manifesting her aspirations of military service to the USA.
Her picture was held to have violated the school 's O tolerance policy.
That was the last lesson [most memorable?] that she learned in that school.



The shreds of my being are all well-aligned toward the resulting
success of victim over predator, by the application of superior force.
I favor the success of GOOD over evil; u prefer that evil prevail
over the feeble defenselessness of good.
U have a right to your opinion.



In addition to your question being impolite & insulting,
it also fails to make any sense. I choose not to respond with emotion.

I discern your objection to be my failure to resent my parents for their
NOT disdaining my intelligence at age 8 nor holding my mind in contempt,
at that age, as (u imply) thay shud have done, sufficiently to actively disarm me
(as if I coud not quickly re-arm myself from the environment).
Note that my nabors were better armed than we were.
I was a decent shot, but not good enuf for the school's gunnery team.
Thay were pretty good.

Guns are emergency equipment; the latter exists to enable
someone to CONTROL an emergency e.g., a fire, a drowning, or
the predatory violence of man or beast. Every predatory event
is a contest of power between the predator and his victim.
Emergency equipment is to enable the victim to prevail
in circumstances that are resolved (for good or for ill)
by the application of power. The ideal concept is that the victim will WIN.




It strikes me as very odd that u believe that
all sane people will prefer to be HELPLESS if confronted
by the predatory violence of man or beast!??!
I 'd rather be able to control the situation.

Qua your question, I remember about 5O years ago,
when my class was called upon by the English Professor
to render "Show and Tell" for lessons in Public Speaking.
I brought an M-1 Carbine to class and I field-stripped it
to show them how it functions. I got a good grade; no trouble,
no fuss. It took a while, during the day, before I went home with it.





David

Do u think thay 'll treat
their students with better respect ?





David

I did not author the Bill of Rights,
but I support its freedom with enthusiasm.

At show and tell, I produced a .30 caliber M-1 Carbine.
I got a good grade and no fuss as it hung out naked all day long; quiet.





David

Lemme put it this way:
carrying a defensive revolver all day
is similar in principle to wearing your seatbelt
all the time that u are driving or flying. How 's that ?





David

No. There 'd be no reason to believe
that he 'd fail to achieve a good, accurate proficiency anyway.





David

I think the line should be drawn on case specific basis.

I feel like I have fallen down a hole and there's a big rabbit in a top hat looking at me.
You are the epitomy of the strange American, David. I honestly think that you have a screw loose, or more frighteningly, there are more like you out there.
Personally, I feel that any child found with a firearm on them at school, should immediately be taken into protective care until it can be established whether one or both parents are morons, psychos or redman chewing redneck white supremists. Or acombination of the above.