For some time now I’ve been documenting what can only be described as an epidemic of lunacy infecting school principals and teachers throughout the nation. Those interested in tracking the spread of the infection might visit my PJ Media article from March, or this SMM article from February that is very similar to the first example that follows. So let’s put on our moon suits and respirators and examine the first patient.
Loaded toy cap gun of death
Donna St. George at the Washington Post writes:
A kindergartner who brought a cowboy-style cap gun onto his Calvert County [Maryland] 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.
‘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.
The family’s attorney appealed the suspension late Thursday, asking that the action be reversed and the child’s record be expunged.
Surely there’s more to this story. Surely the tiny terrorist was threatening horrific violence? Not so much:
In Calvert County, the trouble began Wednesday at 8:30 a.m. on a 10-minute bus ride to school.
According to the family, the boy’s friend had brought a water gun on the bus a day earlier. On Wednesday, unbeknown to his parents, the boy stowed his cap gun — from Frontier Town near Ocean City — inside his backpack as he left for school.
He told his mother after the incident that he had ‘really, really’ wanted to show his friend.
The mother was called by the principal at 10:50 a.m. and was told that her son had the cap gun and pretended to shoot someone on the bus. She said that both the kindergartner and his first-grade sister, sitting nearby on the bus, disputed that account.
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.
The child’s disciplinary referral said he was being suspended for possession of a look-alike gun.
If the cap gun was loaded, it would have been “deemed an explosive and police would have been called in.” Think about that gentle readers. If the cap gun was loaded. The cap gun. Loaded with–caps. Caps. If the youngster had a firecracker, what then? Call out a NEST (Nuclear Emergency Support Team) team?
Obviously this kid’s mother is some kind of anti-school lunatic. Not so much:
The child’s mother is a high school teacher in Calvert who said she strongly supports the school system and loves the teachers at her son’s school. She and her husband, who coaches youth sports, are active community volunteers.
For the family, a major concern is the long period the 5-year-old was questioned without parental guidance or support. His sister was questioned, too, she said.
‘The school was quite obviously taking it very seriously, and he’s 5 years old,’ she said. ‘Why were we not immediately contacted?
Well obviously because the tiny terrorist could be a part of an enormous cap gun running ring. The principal obviously had to question him to determine the extent of his terrorist involvement so that any future cap gun shipments could be interdicted, particularly if they were loaded. The potential for mild banging noises that might cause the innocent to say “o– a cap gun,” boggles the mind, or at least the minds of the school officials involved. And his six year old sister could easily be the ringleader of this gun and explosive running gang. It’s always the ones you least expect. How old was this kid again?
The family’s attorney, Robin Ficker, said that the age of the child is important and that the incident could have been used as a teachable moment.
‘Kids play cowboys and Indians,’ he said. ‘They play cops and robbers. You’re talking about a little 5-year-old here.
Thank goodness school officials near our nation’s capitol are so vigilant. You can’t be too careful when you’re talking about loaded cap guns, which as everyone knows are the preferred weapons of terrorists everywhere… What’s that? They’re not? Oh. And fortunately, just a short time later, the anti-terror forces of the Calvert County Schools once again swung into action, this time, premptively. From WMAL.com:
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.
Bruce Henkelman of Huntingtown says his son, a sixth grader at Northern Middle School in Owings, was talking with friends about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre when the bus driver hauled him back to school to be questioned by the principal, Darrel Prioleau.
‘The principal told me that with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word ‘gun’ in my school you are going to get suspended for 10 days,’ Henkelman said in an interview with WMAL.com.
Well, obviously the 11 year-old terrorist–probably in cahoots with the 5 year old cap gun runner–must have said something pretty terrible to warrant a ten day suspension. Not so much:
He said, I wish I had a gun to protect everyone. He wanted to defeat the bad guys. That’s the context of what he said,’ Henkelman said. ‘He wanted to be the hero.’
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. ‘He started asking me questions about if I have firearms, and [the deputy said] he’s going to have to search my house. Search my house? I just wanted to know what happened.’
No search was performed, and the deputy left Henkelman’s home after the father answered questions in a four-page questionnaire issued by the Sheriff’s Office.
And now, let’s take a visit to the Department of Understatement, ACLU of Maryland chapter:
Based on information about Henkelman’s case provided by WMAL.com, the ACLU of Maryland said the suspension, later reduced to one day, was a poor choice by school administrators.
‘It’s appropriate for school officials to investigate when there is a concern about student safety. But based on what’s been described to us, once the school official concluded that all the young man wanted to do was to be safe at school and that he posed no risk to anyone, the suspension was really inappropriate,’ said Sonya Kumar, an ACLU staff attorney.
‘The school should have been assuring him that they were going to take steps to keep all students safe, not punishing him,’ she added.
So obviously this 11 year-old is a hardened terrorist. And this Henkelman is probably a real troublemaker too, maybe even a cap gun manufacturer! Not so much:
Henkelman said the incident happened last December right before students were sent home for winter break, but he did not feel compelled to take his story to the public until he learned that a 5-year-old Calvert County boy was suspended for bringing a toy cap gun on a school bus.
‘[My son] was very scared at the fact that he was interviewed by the principal and a sheriff’s deputy alone. He didn’t know where I was,’ Henkelman said.
Well, yeah.
Helpful General Rule Of Life: When the ACLU agrees with rational people on any issue even remotely involving the Second Amendment or guns, you know something is really, really wrong.
Let’s review: an eleven year-old boy, while riding on a school bus, was talking about having a gun to protect people. He didn’t have a gun, not even an unloaded cap gun with an orange tip. He didn’t threaten anyone. And a school principal, an adult, thought this grounds for a ten-day school suspension? And a sheriff’s deputy, an adult, thought this sufficient grounds for a warrantless search of the child’s parent’s home? And he had a four-page questionnaire relating to this topic he demanded the parent fill out? That Sheriff’s Office must have terrible trouble with juveniles expressing the desire for guns to protect those they love, I mean, why else would they have a four page questionnaire covering that topic? And this incident was so serious–“with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word ‘gun’ in my school you are going to get suspended for 10 days,”–the punishment was reduced to one day.
In this case–and this is rare–I’ll let the ACLU make the point:
Across the board, we are concerned about practices where we have these sort of knee-jerk reactions without really stopping to think and use our common sense about whether what a kid is doing or saying actually presents any sort of concern for the safety and well-being of others,’ Kumar said.
Perhaps in our soon-to-come politically correct future, reactionary terrorists like cowboys will be replaced by more appropriate heroes of the state, and instead of playing “cowboys and Indians,” children will play “principals and sheriff’s deputies with four-page questionnaires.”
Stately McDaniel Manor 
The clearest symptom of the epidemic of lunacy in your country is the NRA’s power. They hold your country hostage in the same way that the Taliban does in Afghanistan.
Um no. Because you are clearly confused I will explain this to you s-l-o-w-l-y.
The Taliban is a terrorist organization that uses violence against unarmed or outgunned members of the populace, including women and children, to impose an extremist religious regime on others. A regime that counts murder or disfigurement as fitting penalties for doing things like trimming your beard, listening to the radio, or trying to go to school while being female.
The NRA was created and is supported by the contributions of free and consenting citizens. It uses the rule of law and words to protect a fundamental right that was enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.
Do you see the difference now? It should be as plain as a container of acid to the face.
The NRA, like the Taliban, evokes an ancient and discredited meme (the “right” to bear arms) to rationalize lunacy. The Taliban likewise claims a text (the Koran) to justify it’s violence.
The NRA is a terrorist organization that tolerates violence against unarmed or outgunned members of the populace, including women and children (Sandy Hook for example), to impose it’s extremist beliefs on others.
The NRA was created and is supported by the contributions of the corporate gun lobby. It hides behind the rule of law and weasel words to protect a fundamentalist “right” that was relevant in the U.S. Constitution when it was written in 1791.
Let me explain this piece of history to you slowly…
In 1996, the weapons used at Sandy Hook were outlawed by the Australian government in response to a massacre at Port Arthur which killed 35 people. Since that event, there have been no gun massacres in Australia, a country that is similar to the USA in terms of its democratic culture and attitude to the rule of law.
The rate of gun fatalities in Australia is about one eighth of that in the USA per head of population.
See – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CbkKYdWiS0
Dear 1735099a:
Thanks for your comment, but I’d appreciate it if your future comments focused on the topic of discussion, which is the unjustified and irrational treatment of children for behaving like children. The NRA has no more to do with these stories than General Motors would if educators punished children for playing with or talking about cars.
Thanks!
“but I’d appreciate it if your future comments focused on the topic of discussion”
Your post is entitled “The Epidemic of Lunacy: No Cure In Sight”.
It is eminently reasonable, in my reply, to draw your attention to a form of lunacy that, in the final analysis, is the reason why school authorities react in such a manner in your country.
Given the recency and frequency of gun massacres in schools in the USA (unsurpassed in cruelty and consistency in any other first world country on the planet) school communities are living in fear.
I have recently retired after 40 years in education in this country, 18 of them as principal in a number of schools in my state of Queensland. Schools in this country are safe and secure places, as a consequence of our rational gun laws. This kind of reaction to a child bringing a toy gun to school would never happen in Australia, because we don’t live in fear.
The “lunacy” is not the reaction (seen in context – it’s almost reasonable), but the circumstances, legislative and cultural, that brought it about.
I understand something of the problem with your gun culture after serving in an infantry battalion (7RAR) in Phuoc Tui province in Vietnam in 1970. During that time I carried both an SLR (L1A1 7.62) and an M-72 rocket launcher. I learned to treat these weapons with respect, and understand well their lethality.
You can read about it here – http://jellybeansinthejungle.blogspot.com.au/
We were trained to identify targets and be sparing with ammunition. The US forces that we frequently encountered when they were sharing our AO were very different.
They lacked any kind of field craft, and fire discipline, and you could hear them coming 5 clics away. We gave them a wide berth, considering them almost as dangerous as the VC, because of their proclivity to blaze away with all manner of ordinance without proper target identification.
Individual encounters with GIs (usually on leave in Vung Tau) and on R & R in Bangkok, taught me that as individuals, they were great people, but their understanding of the place of guns in the broad scheme of things can only be described as neanderthal. Obviously, not much has changed in 40 years. Your country sir, has an immature and underdeveloped understanding of the place of deadly firearms in a modern society.
Back to “lunacy”.
Your country has one of the highest rates of gun ownership in the first world.
Your country has one of the highest rates of gun fatalities (homicides, suicides and accidental deaths) in the first world. It is eight times the rate in this country, corrected for population. Join the dots….
The NRA believes that the solution to your horrendous rate of school gun massacres is to arm teachers. In other words, adding more guns and more potential for death and injury on school campuses.
Currently, your country is experiencing a spate of deadly bush fires. Following the reasoning of the NRA, the solution to the fires would be to drive petrol tankers to the hot spots and spray gasoline in the conflagration.
And sir, you post about lunacy…..?
Dear 1735099a:
Ah. Just I can be sure I’m not misunderstanding you, you believe that it is not lunacy for school personnel to punish children for merely wishing they had a firearm to protect those they love?
Licenseplate, while I can appreciate the idea, using hyperbole to express your point is probably not the best course to take. Comparing the NRA to a terrorist organization because it “tolerates” gun violence in the US is tantamount to stating the porn industry “tolerates” rape, or the pharmaceutical industry “tolerates” pill mills.
Do you have a specific reason why me, a law abiding citizen with no criminal history or mental lapses should not own a fire arm?
More over, do you have a good reason at all for confiscating any property that I acquired legally, without relying on future assumpt but disregarding past history?
Mike, I think the lunacy in this instance should be more directed at WHO did what rather than WITH what. A five year old doing this… its really not worth getting into. Just tell the parents “hey, we have your kid’s cap gun in the office, make sure stuff like this doesn’t find its way to school”. Some kids talking about having a gun, or the word “gun” being verboten is a gross over reaction to a gross incident. While not justifiable, it’s at least understandable.
Dear Ruleoforder:
Thanks for your comment! But is the absurd overreaction of these adults really understandable? Should we not expect that those who are supposed to be models of ethical, reasonable behavior for children, behave in reasonable ways? I think we both believe that these adults didn’t behave remotely reasonably.
Would this not seem to suggest, when this occurs over and over across the nation, that more is going on that just a few adults making silly mistakes?
Overreactions, in this instance (to me) is indeed understandable, and does stop short of justifiable. Reasonable vs understandable are two different concepts. I understand impulsive behavior as a reaction, but that doesn’t mean it’s a reasonable action, it just means that I get where it was coming from. Should we expect better? Very much so. Cooler heads and all on matters of crime and punishment (and in these instances, non crime and the dressing down they got). The problem over and over again, in the general population of the US, we very well might just be seeing the isolated incidents, that is what makes the news. Lets be real, a principal or teacher or what have not behaving the way we expect them to when handling a situation won’t make the news, and I would wager that for every gun shaped poptart that makes the paper, there are hundreds more incidents in which such things are ignored entirely.
Troll-man trolls well.
The right to bear arms for personal defense is certainly ancient. Preservation of self is the natural order of things and is not granted by any government or institution. This natural law has never been discredited. To state that is has, suggests someone who lives in a first world country, protected by others. It is the statement of someone who has never been in real danger, because people with guns are keeping danger at bay. Some of those people with guns are members of the American military, who may also be members of the NRA. To equate them with terrorists is ignorant, disrespectful, and the reason for my visceral reaction to your original post.
In your discussion of texts you seem to equate the U.S. Constitution with the Koran, two very different documents. I suggest that you read them both in depth; I have, and see if you cannot discern a few differences.
The NRA has its problems; being a terrorist organization is certainly not one of them. To imply otherwise leads me to believe that you do not know the meaning of the word. The organization was created by soldiers to improve their skills, the same kind of people who are still protecting you with firearms. The claim that the NRA is a creation of the “corporate gun lobby,” is a common talking point and is easily debunked; as is your next talking point concerning Australian gun confiscation. I discuss it at length here.
Firstly, your numbers concerning gun crime do not tell the whole story. Take a look at effects on overall crime here. The gun confiscations in Australia and the UK had nothing to do with public safety and everything to do with control. These governments have taken weapons from the hands of law-abiding citizens, but not criminals. Currently Australia is gearing up an attempt to ban even single-shot and bolt-action rifles. Doctors in the UK are calling for a ban on knives with points because criminal knife attacks have become so common. A free state does not restrict the rights of its citizens based upon the actions of the insane.
You are clearly trolling for a reaction but I doubt that spewing talking points you learned on you tube is not likely to sway anyone to your point of view.
Sorry, the link did not post:
http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/?Article_ID=17847
If this kind of thing had only happened once, maybe twice, and been properly scoffed into no more and done with, I’d believe it was caused by incompetence and overreaction. But when it happens a lot, as it does, it begins to look to me like a concerted and deliberate heavy handed effort to demonize guns and gun owners in the minds of our children. The more I see it happen, the more I think that’s so.
I do not mean to imply a secret conspiracy. Merely a lot of like minded people working in the same field, feeding off their own little “zeitgeist.” I do not know how this trend will end, nor when, but I don’t reckon the long term results will be pretty.