Toy gun leads to Florida boy's expulsion

A toy gun, an obvious toy gun, and they've interrupted this kid's education for a year?

ASTEROID!!!!!!!!1!! :ele:

I'm surprised the poor kid didn't get life imprisonment as well.

When will this PC madness end?

I'm sorry, how does a "toy gun" count as a "gun"?

What do I always say to stories like this?

If you find this unnacceptible, then I don't expect to see you wailing about how the faculty didn't catch on when some other seemingly-harmless kid is in the habit of bringing toys to school/drawing guns for art projects/pointing his finger and saying "bang!'". I don't wanna hear "Whyyyyyyyyy didn't they see the waaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrnnnning signs!?? "

There is no sensible middle ground. It's unreasonable to ask the faculty to hang their collective asses out in the wind and expose themselves to lawsuits by trying to use situational discretion. If anyone is gonna sick a lawyer on them because they didn't play amateur psychologist/2nd string parent and keep every kid under a microscope for the slightest sign of violent intentions because grieving parents need someone to blame and society indulges them, the inevitable and proper response is zero fucking tolerance.

If you don't like that, you accept that once in awhile it'll turn out that the gun wasn't a toy, and that some kids will get shot. Those are the only alternatives.

RIP common sense.

"He wasn't playing with it. He didn't even take it out of the bag and show it to anyone. It's also made of clear fuckin' plastic. Therefore, it's a toy, not a gun."

Oh, shit -- look at that. Sensible middle ground.

We can thank all the kids who brought real guns to school and their negligent parents for this.

You're both missing the point. Common sense allows for the occasional mistake.

Say they found this toy, wagged their finger a bit then sent it home with his parents. But then it turns out that his parents are negligent shitbags with actual firearms laying around, and the next day/month/year he brings a little .38 revolver and ventillates a few classmates. Those parents are going to sue the ever-loving fuck out of the school, and that's not right.

So, if you're not willing to accept an absolute condition of "no holding the school or individual faculty members accountable when some kid goes Columbine on some asses" this is what you get.

First, kill all the lawyers.

Then common sense will follow.

Not good enough. You have to do something about negligent, blame-shifting parents who use public schools as glorified day care centers, too.

But at least the school system's hands would no longer be tied by the fear of litigation. It's sue-happy attorney's that have caused schools to adopt no-tolerance policies as a way to cover their asses from lawsuits.

Not without the participation of the parents, they didn't. Lawyers are just tools (hear that Face and El Chup, you fucking knobs?!?) employed by the parents.

Wrong. If my kid is doing something he isn't supposed to be doing, I expect the school to give me a call and I will handle it.

Expelling a 7 year old for having a toy gun is ridiculous. I can understand a warning and saying, "This sort of thing should not be here at school. Please leave it at home next time, Sammy." Then make note. ONE time of bringing a toy gun to school does not a sociopath make. Find me a decent boy that DOESN'T have a toy gun!
On the bright side, if his parents have any intelligence this boy will probably be better off being home schooled. This article is evidence that public education is a failure!

I can honestly say that I'm one of the few people who gets to carry weapons into a school: musket rifle, six-shooter, sword, Bowie knife...

You jumped to the wrong conclusion. Without the stupid no-tolerance policies the school would then be free to contact parents and work with them on these kind of situations case by case instead of one blanket expulsion rule.

The child will probably turn out much better being home schooled than he would if he was babysat by the gub'mint anyways.

I love the tortured, 1960s-Batman-solving-a-Riddler-riddle logic education bureaucrats come to: It is shaped like a gun, so it is a gun. And it can launch projectiles, so it is a weapon.

I wonder, if you drew a gun on a piece of paper, if that would be a gun. How about if you cut it out, so it was shaped like a gun too? You could grab a straw from the cafeteria and use it to shoot spitwads. So that would be a weapon. What if you drew a gun on a piece of paper and taped a straw to it? Expulsion time?

I wonder if you could rob the principal with this "gun". I would like to try that. "Give me all your money." "That's not a real gun." "Yes it is. You expelled a fucking seven year-old because it was, so it is a fucking real gun. Now give me all your money or I'll murder you."

Shit, I think I'd be willing to risk a felony conviction to do that. Can you imagine the prosecutor, trying to bring that case?

I was just about to say: Depending what and how well the parents teach him, the kid will be light-years ahead of his peers.

[action=Bickendan]meekly raises hand...[/action]
I didn't have a toy gun. I had a rifle, and it would have actually fired shit if I had the ammo

Back in 3rd grade, I brought Megatron (the toy, not the asshole) to school, and then, the very next day, that one retard cop shot that kid wielding a Laser Tag gun, and the moron's excuse was that it looked like a real gun (it SO didn't) and then I brought Megatron in again, not thinking, not caring about news hysteria, and I got in deep shit, when the day before, it was okay.

And, not long after, is when Megatron got turned into Galvatron so he'd look like a crappy space gun.
Pistol mode SO sucked, it was cannon mode with a fold down dildo handle.
Sawk.
Walther P-38 was so much better.

Anyway, I made snarky comments during my punishment similar to Volpone's.

I was a prophet even then, it's really gotten that bad.

Oh, and all through 6th-7th grade, I was secretly packing my scout knife.
Just for the thrill of getting away it.
The kids that were labeled "bad", got hassled for having switch-combs, and I was the one with the blade.
Fuck, I hated school.

When I was a kid, that was the whole ninja craze, so all the cool kids had butterfly knives. The really cool ones might sneak in a ninja star--although those weren't allowed. And in fifth grade a kid got sent to detention because he brought a box of primers and during recess we were setting them off by hitting them with an aluminum baseball bat.

This is why America is going to lose out to China. In a few years we'll be making our kids sit down to pee. You can bet Chinese schoolkids have ample access to ninja weapons and fireworks.

Heh, through 11th-12th grade, I'd intermittently pack my Swiss Army Knife, bought in Switzerland with my name engraved on it... and even use the screwdriver on it in class while working on computers.

LOL I never packed. We knew the wife of the guy that owned the gun shop where my dad bought his ammo. She was my English teacher and kept a .357 in the second drawer of the filing cabinet behind her desk...

Why, yes!

Oh, absolutely!

Yes! And sometimes a felony!

But, of course, school is a place where rubber bands are weapons and rosary beads show gang affiliation. It is also a place where a kid's father can be murdered and when the kid goes back to school two days later, gets suspended for drug use due to his bloodshot eyes.

And really....just read this list of retardation:

http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/zerostup.html

When are people going to stand up and tell these schools to fuck off? It has gotten to levels of insanity that is simply embarrassing to behold.

In 4th Grade I wore a toy snubnose detective special cap pistol in a holster on my belt all day one day. Nobody said a word against it. In third grade I brought a GI Joe (the REAL goddam 12" GI Joe) to school, with his guns, and nobody said a word against it. I even stripped him naked to shock the girls, and I wasn't carted off for psychological care.

And I turned out okay!

Seriously, I think zero tolerance is going to CREATE children with deep psychological problems that they later take out on the authorities with REAL guns and naked dolls.

That would make sense if he had at minimum pretended to ventilate a few classmates with the toy version. He didn't, so it doesn't.

Nudge...nudge....nudge...

The more kids who punished the less parents who will even buy a toy gun for fear their child will have a memory lapse and be expelled. Take the guns away from kids, demonize them, use the falling sales of toy guns to illustrate a "moving away of society from the desire for guns" Eventually, toy makers stop making them and then they can really set sights on getting rid of real guns a few generations down the line as people become more and more apathetic...

Schools are taking no chances nowdays and as a taxpayer I am all for it. Id rather have them do this than get sued by the parents of some kid who got shot and then my property taxes would get raised to pay for this.