A Year of Insanity

So about a year ago I started bookmarking stories that I happened to notice about "weapons" and schools. This is not something where I went out and looked for them, so I'm sure this is not an exhaustive list, but it's long enough (well, actually any one of these stories would be one too many). I did it not out of some vendetta, but because I read a story about a small child being suspended for a toy gun and recalled having read all too many similar stories. Turns out I just happened across 29 stories in less than a year, all across the US. This is insane. In none of these cases was any crime committed, or even intended. In fact, in most of these cases the "weapon" was fictional. In fact, the picture above is of one of the "weapons."

So without further ado, here's the list:

• A 6-year-old elementary school student has been suspended for forming a gun with his hands, pointing it at a student and saying ‘pow’. Administrators called the action a ‘serious incident'.

• A 7-year-old Maryland boy was suspended from school for two days for shaping a breakfast pastry into what his teacher thought looked like a gun, according to his father.... "All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but, it didn't look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun [kind of]," Josh told the station.

A 16-year-old high school student and two others who wrestled a gun away from another teenager threatening to shoot are being treated as anything but heroes — in fact, they were suspended by their high school for the potential life-saving actions.
A sophomore at Cypress Lake High School in Florida led the two others in taking the gun away from a 15-year-old who was threatening to shoot on the bus ride home on Tuesday. Witnesses told Fox 4 Now that the student aimed the weapon point blank at another student and threatened to pull the trigger.
The spat allegedly took place between the gun-wielding student, identified by WVZN-TV as Quadryle Davis, and another teen who had been arguing with his friend.
The student who was targeted said he saw Davis with a gun in his lap. They then began to fight, and Davis pointed the gun at him and threatened to shoot.
“I think he was really going to shoot him right then and there,” said the student who wrestled the .22 caliber RG-14 Revolver away. “Not taking no pity.”
He added: “No doubt. He was going to shoot him point blank.”
Authorities confirmed that the gun was loaded.
The 16-year-old tackled the potential shooter, a football player, and two others joined to help get the gun away.
The next day, all three students who wrestled the gun away were suspended for three days.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/553098/students-wrestle-gun-away-from-potential-school-shooter-get-suspended/#qg9ogOSsrrrBfyD2.99

• A 16-year-old high school student and two others who wrestled a gun away from another teenager threatening to shoot are being treated as anything but heroes — in fact, they were suspended by their high school for the potential life-saving actions. A sophomore at Cypress Lake High School in Florida led the two others in taking the gun away from a 15-year-old on the bus ride home. The student aimed the weapon point blank at another student and threatened to pull the trigger. Authorities confirmed that the gun was loaded. The 16-year-old tackled the potential shooter, a football player, and two others joined to help get the gun away. The next day, all three students who wrestled the gun away were suspended for three days.

• A plastic Lego sized gun caused a disturbance on a Old Mill Pond Elementary School bus Friday morning. Mieke Crane is the mother of the six-year-old kindergarten student who brought the gun on the bus.

• Jared Marcum, the eighth grade Logan, West Virginia student who was suspended and arrested after refusing to change his NRA t-shirt at school, was met by several supporters Monday morning outside of Logan Middle School.  "He was arrested, he was put into handcuffs, he was removed from the school and brought to the Logan City Police Department," White said.

• A Michigan elementary school is defending its decision to confiscate a third-graders batch of homemade cupcakes because the birthday treats were decorated with plastic green Army soldiers.

• Kindergartener interrogated over cap gun until he pees his pants, then suspended 10 days. Enough said. 

• An Illinois father wants a school district to reconsider its dress code after his son was asked to remove a U.S. Marines T-shirt or be suspended. Daniel McIntyre, 44, of Genoa, told FoxNews.com that his 14-year-old son, Michael, was asked to remove the T-shirt by eighth-grade teacher Karen Deverell, who said the garment’s interlocking rifles was problematic and had to be removed from sight.

• A high school student in Florence, AZ, said he has been suspended because of a picture of a gun. The picture shows an AK-47 on top of a flag. McClaine said the school initially suspended him for three days Friday. "This gun wallpaper does not show anything that's violent. It's not showing anybody getting shot in any way. It's just a picture of a gun. It's nothing -- nobody getting shot, nobody getting it pointed at them, it's nothing," said McClaine. McClaine said the gun is not his. He's interested in joining the military and said he found it on the internet.

• A mom believes a South Philadelphia elementary school went too far when she says administrators punished her little girl for pulling out a paper gun in class. The paper gun, according to her mom, looks something like a sheet of paper folded over. Her mom says it was made by the girl's grandfather the day before. Her mom said that a school administrator scolded her in front of the entire class and school staff even searched her, with other kids watching the whole time. Valentin says she went to throw it away, but a boy saw it and called the administrators. "He yelled at me and said I shouldn't have brought the gun to school and I kept telling him it was a paper gun but he wouldn't listen," Valentin said.

• A five-year-old girl is "the least terroristic person in Pennsylvania" but saying she was going to shoot classmates and herself with her pink "Hello Kitty" bubble gun got her kicked out of school. She didn't have the Hello Kitty Bubble Gun with her at the time, but when school officials got wind of the conversation, they questioned the little girl, suspended her for her making a "terroristic threat," according to The Daily Item newspaper, and told her parents she needed to be evaluated by a psychiatrist. "All I know," the mother told the paper, "is what my daughter has told me and she said she was told she could go to jail, which is a very traumatic thing for a five-year-old to live with." The attorney says the little girl was questioned for about three hours, without her parents.

• Two 7-year-old classmates pointed pencils at each other and made shooting noises - innocent play between friends, the mother of one said.  "They were pretending they were in the military," Wendy Marshall said.  The boys were kept out of school Monday and Tuesday for violating the division's weapons policy. They initially faced up to 10 days' suspension.

• A Madison City School suspended a seven-year old boy today for having a piece of paper with drawings of firearms on it. His father was told he was being suspended for one day for “extensive knowledge of firearms” and for possessing drawings of guns on a piece of paper. His father is a Federal Agent and a firearms instructor for his agency, so naturally his son has knowledge of firearms, what to do if he sees a gun, etc.  When the father got to school, his son began crying because he thought his dad was being arrested. A school resource officer was present, and another police officer had been called to the scene. The child’s bag had been searched for weapons.

• A 13-year-old girl was suspended from school after she was accused of threatening her teacher.  Taylor was wearing an NYPD shirt at school. She says in the last moments of math class, she and some friends were pretending to be police officers.  "I was shooting the markers at the front of the board," Taylor Trostle said. "It was just like this and I was like 'pow pow' and then she just turned around." Taylor was sent to the principal's office and immediately suspended for three days. Her write up says the finger gun was pointed in the teacher's direction.  "That was considered a terroristic threat because the teacher feared for her life," Kristin Trostle said.

• Eagle Scout Cole Withrow was just a few weeks from graduating with honors from his North Carolina high school, but now the active church member is facing a felony weapons charge and a precarious future after accidentally leaving a shotgun in his pickup truck in the school parking lot. When he realized his mistake, he went to the front office to call his mother for help.  But when he asked her to come and take the gun, he was overheard in the private conversation. They found the shotgun in Withrow’s locked vehicle. The situation was turned over to law enforcement immediately. He was also expelled for 365 days – meaning that he will not be able to graduate from high school.

• A 10-year-old from a Nashville suburb was disciplined by his school’s administration for brandishing a pizza slice that some say resembled a handgun.  He was eating a slice of pizza when a “kid across the table from him” remarked that the unfinished slice “looked like a gun,” Nicholas’s mother told ABC affiliate WKRN-TV. “So he picked it up and started shooting it in the air," she added.  As punishment, Nicholas was condemned to the "silent table" during lunch period for the remainder of the semester.

• OWINGS, MD -- The father of a middle schooler in Calvert County, Md. says his 11-year-old son was suspended for 10 days for merely talking about guns on the bus ride home. According to his father, he neither threatened nor bullied anyone. "He said, I wish I had a gun to protect everyone. He wanted to defeat the bad guys. The boy was questioned by the principal and a sheriff's deputy, who also wanted to search the family home without a warrant, Henkelman said.

• A group of students from Chase Lake Elementary School in Edmonds, Washington, asked their teacher if they could bring Nerf guns to school. The teacher gave permission, but the school punished the children with suspension anyway. The students even had a perfectly legitimate reason to bring the guns to school; they wanted to fire foam darts 100 times as part of a probability experiment. The school stands strong by its convictions. “Again, it’s a matter of safety and it’s of the utmost importance."

• A 12-year-old boy was suspended from a Coventry middle school after his parents said he brought a small gun keychain to school. Joseph Lyssikatos said the keychain was in his backpack at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School on Thursday when it fell out. The keychain in question is slightly larger than a quarter. Joseph told NBC 10 he bought it for 25 tickets at an arcade.

• Cody Chitwood, 17, went fishing several days before and left his two fishing poles and tackle box in his car. Little did he know that Lassiter administrators would order a K-9 search of the parking lot on Sept. 17 and a dog would hit on his car. That was enough for police to order a thorough search of his 1998 BMW 328i. They found four knives, all of them with blades of at least 2.5 inches, according to the arrest warrant. Three of them, including a fillet knife and a spring-assisted knife, were inside his tackle box in the trunk. “I enjoy fishing. I go fishing probably once a week, sometimes twice a week,” said Chitwood, who has been suspended for 10 days by Lassiter Principal Chris Richie. “I just forgot that it was in there. I had my fishing poles in the car, too.” He was charged with carrying a weapon in a school safety zone, which is a felony in Georgia.

• Andrew Williams never thought when he pulled into the student parking lot that he would leave school as an accused felon. Campus police got an anonymous tip of smoke rising from Williams’ car in the student parking lot that smelled like marijuana “We just walked out there and I watched him search my car,” Williams said Sanford opened the center console of the car and found a pocket knife. The blade measured 3 inches, long enough to place Williams in violation of Section 16-11-127.1 of the Georgia state penal code: “Carrying weapons within a school safety zone.” Among the forbidden weapons is any knife with a blade longer than 2 inches.

• A Canadian father was arrested and strip-searched Wednesday after his 4-year-old daughter drew a picture of a gun in her kindergarten class. Ontario dad Jesse Sansone told the Toronto Sun his little girl’s drawing was supposed to be him, getting monsters and bad guys. Her teacher apparently thought differently, and the school contacted child protective services. When Sansone arrived to pick his daughter up, three police officers were waiting to take him into custody. When Sansone got to the school, he was told only that he was being arrested for possession of a firearm and given no additional details. At the police station, he was forced to remove his clothes for a full strip search. While he sat in a jail cell, police even brought his pregnant wife to the station for more questioning. The “gun” his children told police about? A toy pistol that shoots foam darts, which police discovered during a search of his house.

• A South Carolina mother says her son was suspended for drawing a picture of a cartoon bomb at home and bringing it to school. "They actually reiterated to me they knew he was non-violent," Parham told the station. "They knew he was not actually having a bomb, creating or making a bomb. But that they could not go with out making an example of him." Rhett, who has autism, was suspended indefinitely by school administrators.

• School officials are no fans of gun ban signs.  “The intent of the stickers is to inform those with a concealed-carry license that they are not allowed to bring a gun into this location.” “It is not necessarily something you’d want on a school building,” District 123 Supt. Paul Enderle said. “But it correlates with the law, and I think if it ultimately helps to keep schools safe, that’s the objective.” The image can be frightening, Byrne said, “but if it keeps the world safer, that’s OK. The No. 1 thing we do for kids in general is keep their school safe.”

• Dwayne Ferguson spent more than a decade advocating for nonviolence and peace in the streets of Buffalo. He was a well-known face in the movement for the SAFE Act, the state law that made carrying a gun on school property a felony. He was also a familiar presence in the hallways of the city’s Harvey Austin Elementary School, where he worked in the after-school program and mentored students. No one imagined that on Thursday he would show up at the school in possession of a gun, touching off an hours-long lockdown, search and ultimately his arrest on two felony charges.

• An 11-year-old boy was suspended from school after he voluntarily turned in a non-firing plastic toy gun that had been forgotten in his jacket pocket. Caden Cook, a sixth grader at Fredrick Funston Elementary School, was suspended for allegedly violating the school’s weapons policy against dangerous objects, in addition to being ordered to undergo counseling, and subjected to intimidation tactics, interrogation, and dire threats by school officials—all without his mother being present.

• On Thursday, Duren-Sanner, a senior at Northeast High School drove his father's car to school. During a random lockdown, his car was chosen to be searched. Duren-Sanner gave permission because he said he had nothing to hide. His father is a commercial fisherman and apparently left a fishing knife in the car. Duren-Sanner's father said it might have been wedged between one of the seats. School officials suspended him for 10 days, the maximum allowed under school policy, and then he was reprimanded to attend 90 days at an alternative school. Duren-Sanner will not be able to attend prom, his JROTC ball or walk at graduation. It's unclear whether he'll be able to graduate at all. He also faces weapons charges with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Department.

• Wiser was taking Firefighter 2 and EMT courses. He completed the law enforcement course, received several certifications, including the National Terror Defense certification from FEMA, the Terror Recognition certification and (certification as an) Emergency Vehicle Operator.  He joined the Army, enrolling the Future Soldiers program.  What did they find inside Wiser’s vehicle? “My stun gun was locked in the glove box,  a pocket knife was in my EMT medical vest for cutting seatbelts. I was in jail for almost 13 days.” The Army discharged him. “If I am convicted of a felony, I’m never going to be a police officer. I’m never going to be a fireman. I’m never going to be in the military,” he added. “I won’t even be able to be a janitor. I’m 18 years old, and this is going to ruin my entire life.”

[UPDATE] Rounding it to an even 31, these just in:

• A central Ohio principal says she suspended a 10-year-old boy from school for three days for pretending his finger was a gun and pointing it at another student's head. The boy's father says it's the adults who are acting childish for suspending the boy from Devonshire Alternative Elementary School in Columbus last week.
  
• Seventh-grader Ethan Chaplin has been home from school for two days after getting in trouble in math class. He says he was just twisting around a pencil with a pen cap on it when a student behind him yelled, "He's making gun motions, send him to juvie."

A 16-year-old high school student and two others who wrestled a gun away from another teenager threatening to shoot are being treated as anything but heroes — in fact, they were suspended by their high school for the potential life-saving actions.
A sophomore at Cypress Lake High School in Florida led the two others in taking the gun away from a 15-year-old who was threatening to shoot on the bus ride home on Tuesday. Witnesses told Fox 4 Now that the student aimed the weapon point blank at another student and threatened to pull the trigger.
The spat allegedly took place between the gun-wielding student, identified by WVZN-TV as Quadryle Davis, and another teen who had been arguing with his friend.
The student who was targeted said he saw Davis with a gun in his lap. They then began to fight, and Davis pointed the gun at him and threatened to shoot.
“I think he was really going to shoot him right then and there,” said the student who wrestled the .22 caliber RG-14 Revolver away. “Not taking no pity.”
He added: “No doubt. He was going to shoot him point blank.”
Authorities confirmed that the gun was loaded.
The 16-year-old tackled the potential shooter, a football player, and two others joined to help get the gun away.
The next day, all three students who wrestled the gun away were suspended for three days.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/553098/students-wrestle-gun-away-from-potential-school-shooter-get-suspended/#qg9ogOSsrrrBfyD2.99

A 16-year-old high school student and two others who wrestled a gun away from another teenager threatening to shoot are being treated as anything but heroes — in fact, they were suspended by their high school for the potential life-saving actions.
A sophomore at Cypress Lake High School in Florida led the two others in taking the gun away from a 15-year-old who was threatening to shoot on the bus ride home on Tuesday. Witnesses told Fox 4 Now that the student aimed the weapon point blank at another student and threatened to pull the trigger.
The spat allegedly took place between the gun-wielding student, identified by WVZN-TV as Quadryle Davis, and another teen who had been arguing with his friend.
The student who was targeted said he saw Davis with a gun in his lap. They then began to fight, and Davis pointed the gun at him and threatened to shoot.
“I think he was really going to shoot him right then and there,” said the student who wrestled the .22 caliber RG-14 Revolver away. “Not taking no pity.”
He added: “No doubt. He was going to shoot him point blank.”
Authorities confirmed that the gun was loaded.
The 16-year-old tackled the potential shooter, a football player, and two others joined to help get the gun away.
The next day, all three students who wrestled the gun away were suspended for three days.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/553098/students-wrestle-gun-away-from-potential-school-shooter-get-suspended/#qg9ogOSsrrrBfyD2.99

Posted in: America,education,Guns,law