Second Grader Suspended for Pointing Pencil Like a Gun
The war on little boys marches on
In the latest school disciplinary response to anything that might resemble even the idea of a gun, a seven year old boy at a Virgina elementary school has been suspended for pointing a pencil at another student and simulating gun noises.
From FOX43TV.com:
A Suffolk school suspended a second grader for pointing a pencil at another student and making gun noises. Seven-year-old Christopher Marshall says he was playing with another student in class Friday, when the teacher at Driver Elementary asked them to stop pointing pencils at each other.
“When I asked him about it, he said, ‘Well I was being a Marine and the other guy was being a bad guy,'” said Paul Marshall, the boy’s father. “It’s as simple as that.”
Christopher’s father was a Marine for many years. He thinks school leaders overreacted.
Boy who held pencil like gun suspended
The boy’s parents said they felt the school failed to use common sense. Their son has good grades and has never caused any problems in classes before, according to the parents. The boy had also apparently stopped the “threatening” behavior when asked to do so by a teacher, as was indicated by a note that was made in the suspension notice.
But a spokesperson for the school indicated that a pencil is considered to be “a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made.”
“Some children would consider it threatening, who are scared about shootings in schools or shootings in the community,” said Bradshaw. “Kids don’t think about ‘Cowboys and Indians’ anymore, they think about drive-by shootings and murders and everything they see on television news every day.”
The boy’s father sees it differently.
“Enough is enough,” said Paul Marshall. “I see it as the tail is now wagging the dog.”
This is merely the latest in a series of similar reactionary incidents at schools across the country. Most recently, a seven year old was suspended in March for biting a pastry into the shape of a gun, prompting school officials to offer counseling to students who may have been troubled by the incident.
At some point, we may have to consider whether the anti-gun hysteria is actually doing more harm than good to students.
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Comments
Good thing he didn’t habe a Bible in the other hand or he would be kicked out for a year. These people are sooo stupid.
These people are not stupid. They are very very effective.
They have taught this child that guns are evil. The US Constitution should not support evil. Therefore, guns should be banned. If his parents don’t teach him otherwise, we will have another gun banner programmed from small.
Kids today are being programmed in this way: Christianity is evil. Homosexuality and lesbianism are great. Guns are evil. Government is great. Wealth is evil. Welfare is great. Humanity is evil. Abortion is our salvation.
And don’t you know, those pencils are filled with LEAD! (The graphite #2 kind!)
I’ve seen those yellow Assault Pencils around, very scary. You just never know when one of those things is going to go off by accident.
Are those pencils limited to 7 centimeters? You don’t want them too long now!
That’s nothing.
I got a high capacity, fully mechanical pencil with rubber gripper and oversized pocket clip. Hold the button down and the lead just streams out.
So long as it does not have a pistol grip or bayonet lug.
We tolerate the leftist emasculation of males and the attempted emasculation of our 1st and 2nd Amendment rights at our own peril.
But before we act, let’s first ask James Carville for his guidance.
Who is the spokesman? or spokeswoman? The spokesperson crap is so PC as well.
Whoever they are, This “Bradshaw”, they are weak in their job and should consider a new career.
Sounds like Suffolk has a crime problem. Maybe you should worry about that.
None of the Kids I’ve helped raise watched the news until they were around 20. The ones in the house now play Call Of Duty 3.
Suspend the teacher!! – for not being skilled enough to know how to curtail the questionable behavior in a sensible way. Her reaction comes from her own fear and she’s passed that on to an entire classroom and all of the parents.
I agree – very stupid and harmful.
Tar and feather then fire the unteacher.
Your premise is flawed, and its flaw is that using a pencil and making gun noises is questionable behavior. It is not. It is childish behavior, as the child so clearly explained: he was the Marine and his friend was the bad guy.
So, we will have to ban childish imagination and the games they inspire.
Asininities of the Human Kind
[…] Mandy Nagy says: […]
[…] HT: Legal Insurrection […]
As Dan Rather accuses us of wanting to do, “Cut Her Heart Out and Throw Her Liver to the Dogs:”
http://newsbusters.org/blogs/noel-sheppard/2013/05/05/dan-rather-obamas-opponents-want-cut-his-heart-out-and-throw-his-live#ixzz2SQsnrKYx
Is it any wonder that homeschooling is on the rise? In the face of the left’s relentless re-ordering of our culture through public school indoctrination, in this case scrubbing boy-ness, parents are wise to separate their children from the reach of left’s tentacles as best they can.
Civilization gone amuck is my assessment. Common sense, rational thinking and the truth are no longer part of our makeup.
I’ll never make the adjustment ’cause I’m do damned old!
This is child abuse. They are terrorizing these children in advancement of a progressive agenda.
Exactly right. They want children to be terrified of the very idea of the gun, so that the next generation of voters beg our representatives to completely obliterate the second amendment!
Let’s not lose sight of WHY they the left wants to obliterate the 2nd Amendment: to ensure their tyranny.
One more example of why the ONLY hope for public education in this country is to get the government OUT of the school business altogether.
The kid who bit his Pop Tart into the shape of a hockey stick or handgun is another terrible example, as are the kids who’ve been suspended for pointing fingers or drawing pictures of guns. But the most egregious to my mind is the kid who was not only suspended but charged criminally for wearing an NRA tee shirt with a rifle on it.
I think it’s called the “Zero Intelligence Policy.”
‘Zero intelligence’ for the children, but they know exactly what they’re doing.
Got to give them credit for how far they’ve actually gotten, and political payback for the cowards hogging power in the GOP who allowed it. (Not to mention breaking the bank of corrupt media organizations who continue to aid and abet.)
“The children are worried about all these shootings.” I just bet they are, and if they aren’t, by the time the teacher and the school administration finish with them, they will be.
I used to be lazy and ignorant and not realize how bad the government monopoly schools were.
Then I figured it out, and blamed the schools for being the government bureaucratic incompetent indoctrination factories they are.
Then I blamed the government for not providing me with school vouchers and tax credits for private school.
Now I realize that it was I who had my priorities wrong and sent my children to these schools.
How many examples of this kind of nonsense (and worse) do _you_ need?
Some thoughts:
1. No big deal that he’s suspended: he’ll just avoid a few days of “Progressive Addition/Subtraction, and the Plight of the Poor” or whatever it is they “teach” today. The public schools, by and large, are just “educating” a generation of bus boys.
2. His dad is standing up for him. And his friends secretly admire him. And he’ll tell this wonderful tale the rest of his life. Human independence always crushes bureaucratic deadness.
3. Don’t misunderstand me: the teacher is terminally stupid and a Leftist puritan. But she’s in a union, so she’ll never suffer anything. The key is to try to undo the union cancer that has destroyed our public schools. The best hope: deregulate schools, allow vouchers.
4. Ultimately, these Leftists will create totally PC schools, a la Brave New World. Boring. Bus boy land. Meanwhile, the kids will spend endless hours at home with horrendous videos games, killing everything that moves.
5. The best defense: teach you kid to shoot a weapon safely. Take him to shooting ranges. He’ll be the envy of all his friends. And a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment.
At least you can poke someone with a pencil. It’s a veritable lethal weapon, right? The last offender to be held liable under this fanatical regime was cited for brandishing an assault-style pancake without a license. I don’t recall if it was covered with syrup or served plain.
Actually, it is. You can injure, maim, or kill someone with a pencil. Pretty much most things around us can be used as weapons. So, let’s ban everything.
There is only one solution. A bubble for everyone, and everyone in a bubble. No pencils, chopsticks, forks, or anything else that could possibly puncture the bubble.
Unbelievable! These leftist loonies have got to be stopped! I suppose they’ve already banned capture the flag and king of the hill, as well? This is a culture war for sure and it’s one that needs to be fought vigorously before an entire generation of indoctrinated panty waist progressives is thrust upon the traditional American society.
[…] Mandy Nagy says: […]
[…] More at Legal Insurrection. […]
[…] » Second Grader Suspended for Pointing Pencil Like a Gun – Le·gal In·sur·rec·tion […]
we have entered the Ludicrous Speed era
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ygE01sOhzz0
The school administrators and teachers are those who need counseling. Next we will hear that they cut off the fingers of children who, perish the thought, point their fingers menacingly at others.
We are just going to need to fire a few school bureaucrats for being idiots to get this whole mess under control.
The pencil is mightier than the Glock.
One of the best days of my life was when my youngest finished public school and we were no longer under the tyranny that we call education. From bad teachers influencing his carrer to lack of education and stuff like this. It is stupid.
[…] FOX 43 reported, via Legal Insurrection: […]
The NEA-AFT efforts to destroy male children is well underway and this is but the latest in a loooong list of their efforts to neuter males and ’empower’ females…I never hear of young females being suspended for making ‘inappropriate’ noises while holding anything more dangerous than their imagination.
If talking and thinking about guns gets these folks all twitterpated, and this does appear to be the case, they are in the wrong profession.
[…] Second Grader Suspended for Pointing Pencil Like a Gun […]
Public schools nowadays are designed for little girls and they want entire classes filled with children who act like most little girls. Sit still, don’t make noise, come over here, do this, hold hands, play nice, no aggression, no fighting… Most little boys are naturally more aggressive than most little girls. They don’t have ADD, they aren’t anti-social, they don’t need medicine! They’re perfectly normal! A boy must learn to control his aggression. It’s part of becoming a man. Playing sports, playing cops and robbers, playing army, racing each other on the playground, seeing who’s the strongest or fastest is all part of normal development for boys. Modern public schools don’t want that. They want quiet and calmness. So they crush little boys down into a mold of gender neutral-ness. Their rules are designed to teach little boys to be passive and compliant. Teachers used to be interested in harnessing boy’s traits for the good of society. Now they regard the spiritedness of these little males as something that must be broken.
“A pencil is a weapon when it is pointed at someone in a threatening way and gun noises are made,”
No, it’s just a pencil.
If a pencil is a real weapon when a child makes gun noises then I guess my behind is a real wind instrument and a f@rt is a ‘whole’ note.
Hey, Ms. Bradshaw.
If the pencil was painted black and had an eraser cap would that make it an assault weapon?
Moron.
It becomes a “weapon” if pointed at someone and gun sounds are made?
People used to worry about some kids being able to separate fantasy from reality. Apparently it was some adults we need to worry about.
My son lost 2 recesses for pointing his fingers (in the shape of a gun) at another child and making “shooting” sounds. I told my son he is allowed to play cops and bad guys as much as he wants at home and bought him a cap gun…. which he LOVES. What angered me the most was that the prohibition on “gun” play was never explained to him or anyone else prior to the punishment.
I’m not sure exactly what schools are trying to do by banning imaginary guns, but it’s not going to work. Get two boys together in a park and they will play cops & robbers. It happens every time I take my sons to the park, hell, it happens every afternoon in my back yard. My younger son does get tired of always being the bad guy, so I taught them rock/paper/scissors.
[…] Legal Insurrection. Per the clip, in the school’s defense, the kid’s clearly firing a pencil machine gun. […]
Maybe it’s just me. Maybe, the mood I’m in.
I don’t see a damn thing funny, or snarky, or comical, or stand-upish, or any of the “light-heartedness” I see in these comments.
“Other people’s children” syndrome?
These leftists are destroying our boys, our future, by rotting them from the inside out before they can barely ride a bike, parents powerless…but it makes for a some great one liners, eh?
[…] Second Grader Suspended for Pointing Pencil Like a Gun […]