CONCORD, N.H. — Where other students might pose for their senior yearbook photo with
tennis rackets or favorite cars, Blake Douglass (search) wants to be seen with his shotgun.
Posted on 11/16/2004 11:07:11 AM PST by crushelits
Student Sues to Pose With Gun in Yearbook
CONCORD, N.H. — Where other students might pose for their senior yearbook photo with
tennis rackets or favorite cars, Blake Douglass (search) wants to be seen with his shotgun.
The 17-year-old senior filed a federal lawsuit to force Londonderry High School (search) to allow the photo and give up the policy school officials used to reject it.
"What they’re doing is basically discriminating based on content or message," said Penny Dean (search), Douglass’ lawyer and a specialist in gun cases. "You can’t do that. You might want to but you can’t — and especially you can’t with a broad policy like this."
"We want the picture in the yearbook," said Dean said after filing the lawsuit Monday in U.S. District Court.
The lawsuit seeks a temporary injunction so the picture can appear in the yearbook and a permanent injunction against the "pick-and-choose policy" of what photographs are published, Dean said.
The lawsuit names the Londonderry school board members, high school principal, school superintendent, town manager and school officials involved in the production of the yearbook.
An avid hunter and trap and skeet shooter, Douglass said he decided long ago on his senior photo — an outdoor shot in a sportsman’s pose, wearing a shooting vest and holding his broke-open shotgun over his shoulder.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
That young fellow has a perfect right to have his picture posted that way. He is not holding the gun in a threatening pose, but quite professionally, even, if you'll excuse the pun, disarmingly.
But I think it's standard tradition now for people not to allow it. I know local Wal-Marts won't allow you to take pictures with any weapons at all. I can understand in a public marketplace, the desire not to have any firearms in the store, but this picture is already taken. You can tell the young man is somewhat professional, and is not threatening. Give the kid his yearbook picture.
What's the problem here? I don't see anything unsafe about the way the weapon is being held. Just more gun hating leftists trying to make an issue where there is none.
A clear example of 1st Amendment rights suppression of an expression of 2nd Amendment rights content!
When they start voting these fools off the School Board, they'll begin to see the fault of their ways. Until then, put the kids picture in the yearbook and get over yourself!
"Student Sues to Pose With "WEAPON" in Yearbook"
From my military days:
This is my weapon and this is my gun,
This is for fighting and this is for fun.
Ping
The picture looks perfectly OK to me. The lefty's for sure wouldn't like it though. The kid needs a couple of piercings. A burning U.S. flag in the background would be nice, and a couple of newly married gay fellows on a blanket having a picnic would be needed for the picture to pass the liberal school test.
It is good to see that people are finally standing up en masse against the Leftist's plans to p*ssify America's youth. More power to this young man and his family!
I regularly see cashiers asking 60-year-olds to show their ID before they'll sell 'em cigarettes. "Zero tolerance" just allows people to bypass brain usage and go directly to "duh".
Next they'll use "well, if we allow this kid with his gun we'll also have to allow a picture of Daryl with his crack pipe, too." A bunch of BS if ever there was any.
It was alright for John Kerry to swing a shotgun around and brag while running for president so by the same token this young man should have his picture as shown, posted any place.
Does this store not sell rifles, like the other Wal-Marts I've been to?
||Does this store not sell rifles, like the other Wal-Marts I've been to?||
Yes, and that's a good point. But I would say they probably have safety precautions set in place for firearms sales. Perhaps they take it out to your car for you? I don't know, I haven't purchased any firearms from Wal-Mart.
CONTACT INFORMATION FOR THE LONDONDERRY SCHOOL DISTRICT
Email these morons! Call, write, fax!
Londonderry School District:
email: dmcleod@londonderry.org
Phone: (603) 432-6920
fax: (603) 425-1049
address: 268 Mammoth Road Londonderry, NH 03053
http://schools.londonderry.org/index2.cfm
Isn't skeet shooting still an Olympic sport?
Nonsense, he has no such right. No right to have your picture posted exists.
It's bad enough to have people trampling all over real rights without inventing rights which do not exist.
I'm sure a high school student would know that this was going to cause all sorts of problems.
[snicker...]
Yep. Bought a cheap Mossberg shotgun a couple of weeks ago, and sure enough, after stacks of paperwork and thumb prints, the floor supervisor carried the disassembled, boxed shotgun to the door and stepped outside before handing it to me. Corporate policy, no doubt. She was very pleasant.
True, and an important point to make...
but maybe he has a liberty interest (or possibly even a property interest), and a government entity is depriving him of it without Due Process or just compensation. =^)
Well, yes and no. If the school has made a habit of letting the Seniors pose in all sorts of ways, with their pets, their cars, etc., they ought to have to accept his choice as well.
Regardless of his interests, he has no such right. And it's a point lost on many who have trouble distinguishing such things based upon personal preferences.
Some Wal-Marts do not sell firearms. I spent, regretfully, a few months in Cleveland this summer, and when I was in shopping at a Wal-Mart, I decided to browse its selection of rifles and shotguns, just for fun.
Didn't sell 'em. But that's Cleveland for you.
You are committing a fallacy of assuming the poster was talking about Constitutional rights. He was talking about the notion of a right in the softer, more liberty-oriented sense, I'll wager, but of course it's no fun giving someone the benefit of the doubt when you can leap to criticism instead.
Habits don't establish rights.
And the school certainly is within it's legitimate scope in determining what pictures if any, will appear in a yearbook.
Virginia residents enjoy the human right of open carry as well.
The local Wal-Mart (California) took all the guns out of the cases about a year ago. Now they only have air rifles, and paintball stuff. Even worse, they lied and said they'd only be gone while employees were being "trained". They now admit, the guns won't be comming back.
A big fat rasberry, to Wally World!
But it's OK for you to assume what he meant? That's not a fallacy?
I went by his ACTUAL words and you went by what you were willing to bet on based on your assumptions, who needs criticism?
And just what the hell are "softer more liberty oriented" rights? Where would we find such rights?
I did not say Constitutional. They are correct. It was inferred that that's what I meant. Not true. If other people can have pictures taken with memorabilia, cars, certain clothes, whatever, he ought to be able to have his picture like that.
The trigger is hidden, the chamber is hidden, the shotgun is cracked in half, and the tip of the barrel is hidden. You can't make a gun look more harmless than that. And yes, shooting is still Olympic, and it's still a regular sport too.
RE "Isn't skeet shooting still an Olympic sport"
Yes both skeet and trap are still Olympic sports (although double trap was dropped).
USA shooting team won several medals in trap and skeet (as well as some other shooting events) at the last olymics but you never heard anytyhing about it on any of the television coverage.
My year book has couple of photos with guys with their souped up hot rods. All accidents looking for a place to happen. Fortunately no one bought he farm over them.
Please tell me what rights we have as Americans please.
Nor did I. Constitutional rights are merely rights enumerated on paper.
If other people can have pictures taken with memorabilia, cars, certain clothes, whatever, he ought to be able to have his picture like that.
Perhaps it would be "fair" to some people, but it's irrelevant, this is a lawsuit. And just like the liberals like to do, some try to create rights out of whole cloth via the courts.
The point is not the gun, nor the other pictures. The point is, schools get to decide what goes in the yearbook, or whether to even have a yearbook. The students don't get a say. The inmates don't run the asylum.
And before anyone gets carried away, I am pro gun rights, and anti government schools. People have the right to carry and the government has no legitimate power to run schools on my dime.
Rights are not American or not American. Rights exist even if they are violated, and are not peculiar to one place. And the rights we enjoy as Americans because they have been enumerated in various documents (which are mostly ignored today) are not granted by those documants or any laws, they come from God.
But to sum it up,
You have the right to do anything that doesn't violate the equal rights of others.
Contribute to the Blake Douglass Legal Fund: Penny Dean, 59 Warren Street, Concord NH 03301. Please note on the check that it is for the Blake Douglass Legal Fund.
This is from the an article/report in Firearms&Freedom, the journal of GO-NH, Fall/Winter 2004. The article is only in the print copy but you can contact GO-NH at 603-225-4664, they may have reprints.
Might as well send it to the ACLU.
In that case he has the RIGHT to have his picture in the yearbook the same as all of his class mates. You yourself stated our rights are not limited to those enumerated.
What is that? A 20 gauge? What's he trying out for Prom Queen or somethin'. :)
Actually, that is a very cool senior picture. And a very nice nice bit of walnut and steel.
Good shot
Absurd.
You yourself stated our rights are not limited to those enumerated.
In your scenerio, all things are rights. In which case I have the right to do anything I choose because rights are not limited to those enumerated. You really need to do better than that.
Does he have the right to appear nude in the yearbook?
So true. But the schools cannot run amuck in their anti-gun policies. "They" have been following such an approach for years, and they need to be called on it. The schools work to marginalize and demonize guns, and this cannot go on.
I agree.
The schools work to marginalize and demonize guns, and this cannot go on.
It will go on, as long as people continue to tolerate government schools. In a private school, this wouldn't be an issue in all likelihood.
However, if schools can change policies (eg Halloween and the complaints of a few Wiccans), then "we" can help them change this one. Make it cost enough in terms of bad PR and $$, and they will crumble.
Ummmm.... walmart has rack upon rack and case upon case of firearms in their stores.
Suing to prevent school administrators from making decisions about these mundane matters is counter productive. It is a can of worms and you may not like the new "rights" you create.
How many of you would like to see two boys deep kissing each other in the yearbook? That's where it's going you know. If this kind of nonsense is allowed you will rue the day.
I'm not talking about rights. I am talking about control of the schools being maintained by the community.
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