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 ...
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?
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.
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