This is where the “Do Something!” mentality regarding guns gets us.
Ethics Alarms has covered four previous instances where demented and incompetent school officials in Tennessee have yielded to panic as the justification for policy and expelled—not merely suspended, but expelled—-for a whole year, a 10-year-old boy after he pointed his finger in the shape of a gun and made mock “machine gun” noises.
I reviewed the history and the abject stupidity of this plot last September in “That Bomb “Finger Gun” Should Have Never Been Made At All: How Did We End Up With ‘Finger Gun 4’??” and I am not feeling all that well this morning, so excuse me for not rehashing this idiocy again: that post is pretty thorough. It recalled the original school administrator finger gun hysteric’s “comment “justification” that it was important for an unlicensed finger gun wielder to “understand the implications of the gesture”, to which I responded as I ruled the school’s conduct child abuse,
What implications of the gesture? That he is about to shoot bullets out of his finger? That he intends to kill someone with all the firepower an unarmed 6-year-old can muster? That he is making a mimed reference to a Connecticut school massacre he probably doesn’t know a thing about? Why should it matter what his “intent is? It’s a hand gesture! It isn’t vulgar or threatening except to silly phobics in the school system.
and concluded, focusing on “Finger Gun 4,” in which that idiot school administrator cited the current “climate” as justifying the suspension of another six-year-old,
Here’s the climate: teachers and administrators see their roles as cultural revolutionaries and believe schools should be turned into breeding grounds for future progressive voters who think the United States is racist, abortion is a right, open borders are compassionate, income redistribution is essential, reparations must be made, and guns are evil, along with whites, men, and Republicans. The implications are that no responsible parent should entrust their kids to public school.
The justification for this instance of “Do something!” grandstanding is a new state law that had only recently gone into effect. It was passed after a former student shot and killed six people at The Covenant School in Nashville (Look! The Barn Door Fallacy!) and requires students to be expelled for at least a year if they “threaten mass violence” on school property. Of course, no one in their right mind thinks that a 10-year-old making his hand into a gun-like shape is seriously threatening anyone, but these people are not in their right minds.
They will, of course, all be voting Democrat in November.
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Pointer: Reason
Ethics Alarms 
For some reason, this clip came to mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z_JOGmXpe5I
Ah, yes. The tales of school panicky overreach.
A school in my state is facing controversy because they ordered a student to remove the American flag from his truck. They have a ‘no flags’ policy. They claim it is required for ‘safety’. Safety from what? I suspect this came about because of one of two things.
(1) People brought Palestinian flags in and harassed Jewish students as has happened in other schools. In this case, safety is safety of students being harassed by people flying foreign or ideological group flags.
(2) The American flag ‘triggers’ the teachers or makes them feel unsafe because they hate the US.
In any event, the student didn’t take this lying down. He got his buddies to put flags on their trucks too and they made a parade around the school before parking. The parents came to support the flag as well.
Ominously, the school has said they will deal with the students on a ‘case by case basis’. I assume this means, “poor kids that we don’t need on the sports teams will be severely punished but rich kids and essential athletes will get a slap on the wrist”. The school district is in a wealthy area dominated by medical worker transplants from the northeast and California. The student in question appears to be a rural kid from outside of town.
Meanwhile, in my city, our school superintendent has been suspended for misconduct after an investigation by the state was announced. The previous superintendent had covered up the sexual molestation of children by staff, going so far as to put pressure on the police and prosecutors to drop charges.
Stupidity upon stupidity – expel the student because that will stop them from committing violence at the school. What school shooter would have been stopped had the perpetrator been expelled?
Wouldn’t this reinforce to the student that they are hated and feared by the school and make them MORE likely to be a school shooter? Oh, I forgot about the ‘only the government can have guns here’ sign on the door.
I’ve been in theatre long enough to recognize a cue when I see one.
Therefore: Oh, bloody hell.
Quick pick-up, too!
For all the criticism of “Zero Tolerance” rules, at least children have a fair chance gto understand what those rules prohibit.
The bigger problem is not unreasonable rules, but unreasonable interpretations of reasonable rules.
“…four previous incidents where demented and incompetent school officials in Tennessee…”
While Tennessee certainly has its share of these folks, I believe this is the state’s first foray into “finger gun madness,” with the prior incidents I know of occurring in Ohio, Maryland, and Alabama, and of course there may be others. If wrong, I stand corrected, but I’d prefer not to have my state unfairly impugned.