Capped Guns, Cap Guns, Guns

After the recent spate of stories about grade schoolers violating zero tolerance policies with lego guns, pastry guns, itty-bitty sized guns, a Hello Kitty gun that blows bubbles and unloaded fingers pointed in a gun-like shape, there is relatively unanimous agreement that this reflects a inane over-reaction to gun violence in schools, with the notable exception of school administrators.

But is there a line to be drawn below that of actual weapons?  It's easy to ridicule the utterly absurd application of these zero tolerance rules as applied to pop tarts, but what about a toy gun that wasn't created by teeth?  Via The Washington Post:

A kindergartner who brought a cowboy-style cap gun onto his Calvert County school bus was suspended for 10 days after showing a friend the orange-tipped toy, which he had tucked inside his backpack on his way to school, according to his family and a lawyer.

The child was questioned for more than two hours before his mother was called, she said, adding that he uncharacteristically wet his pants during the episode. The boy is 5 — “all bugs and frogs and cowboys,” his mother said.

Many will find this similarly ridiculous, as it was just a toy, notably with the required orange tip so that no reasonably intelligent person would confuse it with a real gun.  When I was a child, playing cowboys and Indians (and cops and robbers, for that matter) was de rigueur for little boys. You may find this sexist (not to mention offensive to native Americans, two words that had yet to meet) and needlessly fostering the violent and aggressive tendencies of children, but that's how it was. And we had loads of fun.

While everyone can agree that no child should bring a real gun to school, and all rational people can agree that any gun that will cease to be a gun with one additional bite isn't a threat, what of the traditional American cap gun?

It doesn't strike me as a good idea that parents allow their children to bring a toy gun to school under any circumstances, but failing to adhere to best practices should produce an explanation and seizure of the toy until the end of the school day, whereupon a reminder to parents that this isn't really show-and-tell type material.  What, however, could school officials have been doing for two hours as they questioned this 5-year-old about his toy gun?

“I have no problem that he had a consequence to his behavior,” said the mother, who asked that her name be withheld to protect her son’s privacy.

“What I have a problem with is the severity,” she said, and the way it was handled.

Not only did this kindergartner endure a two-hour grilling, sufficiently stern that he peed in his pants, but he was suspended.

If the punishment stands, it would become part of the boy’s permanent school record and keep him out of classes the rest of the school year, the family said. He would miss his end-of-year kindergarten program at Dowell Elementary School in Lusby.

Is this to fulfill a needed general deterrent, that this child must be sacrificed so that others will fear the consequences of bringing a toy gun to school?  Not to harp on the obvious, but while such a reaction to a lego gun is ludicrous, does an actual toy gun mandate this response?

Yet, this response tells only a piece of the story, as this 5-year-old was "fortunate" that he brought only the gun, and not the red string of caps that make it really fun.

The mother said the principal told her that if the cap gun had been loaded with caps, it would have been deemed an explosive and police would have been called in.

Clearly, there are depths still to be plumbed when it comes to how zero the zero tolerance can be. It could be that a cap exploding would cause another child to fear, and the severity of wrongs are deemed exacerbated not only by conduct but by the sensitivities of those who experience it.  More likely, however, the screams for blood would come not from the child whose feelings might be affected, but from the parents who watched in horror as a real person did horrible things to real children.

The case comes at a time of heightened sensitivity about guns in schools across the country.

I get it. You get it. We all share the horror of real tragedies. Dr. SJ despises guns, and refused to allow me to give my son a toy gun to play with. So instead, he became a fencer and we had a half dozen swords in the house. That worked out well.

The question isn't whether it's wrong to be concerned about the welfare and safety of children, even though the risk of a crazed gunman shooting up a school remains minuscule.  The question is whether fear, blind emotion, dictates the creation and application of rules that work absurd results when we have the intellectual capacity to distinguish between real and imagined threats.

And the other question, of course, given our deep, abiding concern for the welfare of children, is why we are inflicting harm on 5-year-olds to vindicate unduly emotional adult fears. We have the capacity to think, and thus not engage in this insanity.  Do it for the children.

H/T Jonathan Turley



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