[GrandJediMasterYoda]

When I was a kid growing up in the 60s and 70s I use to collect toy guns: Cap guns, dart guns, water pistols etc I think at the most I had close to 50 which would probably get me life in prison today.

[cajungirl]

My four year old grandson said he wanted a gun and a fishing pole. He said the gun was for shooting birds and pointed up at geese flying over. I was both warmed, he is a real boy, and afraid for him. Being a real boy is going to be dangerous.

[ThunderSleeps]

Used to be what you did on your own private property was, well, private. Guess Mr. Orwell was right. Wonder if we can get a sequel made "Minority Report Card" ...

I hope whoever made the idiotic decision to suspend the child ends up fired. Their judgement is highly suspect. I wouldn't trust anyone with that poor of judgement, sense of balance, and prone to knee-jerk reactions in any kind of authority position.

[DemforBush]

I don’t see how the school has any business getting involved here. It didn’t happen on school property (in school, on the bus, etc.) and I think the argument “well, two of the friends were waiting for the bus” is kinda thin.

I’m not saying the kid shouldn’t be punished by his parents for jerking around. But expelled from school? Unless there is more to this story, yeesh!

[Steve_Seattle]

What is an “air-soft” gun? Is it as powerful as a BB gun? (By “powerful” I mean only that it can hurt someone.)

[Vendome]

Cha Ching!

[Steve_Seattle]

When I was a kid everyone played cops-and-robbers or cowboys-and-Indians or “war”, and we didn’t turn into a bunch of maniacal killers.

[libstripper]

That kid’s a piker. When I was in high school my friends and I built guns. My best was a fully functional Civil War cannon made out of a 3/4” pipe that used match heads as a propellant (my homemade black powder formula never worked quite well enough) and shot marbles dangerously long distances. Some of my friends were into pipe bombs and Molotov cocktails. None of us ever got arrested for all of this and mod of us have survived into early old age.

[sickoflibs]

TV locals news , kid suspended from school for shooting air gun on his own lawn in VA. The plastic gun says 'Zombie Hunter' on it too.

Democrat Anti-Gun Nuts Gone Totally Insane: Kid Suspended for Playing with Toy Gun

Zero tolerance.

[Roccus]

More complete story here.

http://www.wavy.com/news/local/va-beach/has-zero-tolerance-gone-too-far

[Da Coyote]

Someone made this decision.

That someone has a name.

And an address.

Publish it.

And then look the other way.

Make that someone worry.

Worry a lot.

[Java4Jay]

Recording of the 9-11 call..

http://media2.wavy.com/audio/Carew911call.wav

[Java4Jay]

The three children firing the guns were suspended.

http://www.wavy.com/news/local/va-beach/has-zero-tolerance-gone-too-far

[Blood of Tyrants]

So not the school’s authority extends to outside school hours on private property? I would get a lawyer to explain that no matter how “concerned” they were, they had no legal authority to do anything.

[Java4Jay]

The City codes referenced in this case are as follows:

City Code 38-3, primarily section (d) “ Notwithstanding any other provisions of this section, it shall be unlawful for any person to discharge any firearm, spring-propelled rifle or pistol, from, on, across or within one hundred fifty (150) yards of any building, dwelling, street, sidewalk, alley, roadway or public land or public place within the city limits.”

[SkyDancer]

The inmates are running the asylum.

[E. Pluribus Unum]

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.” ― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago 1918-1956

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

http://is.gd/14glYe

(pdf file, right at the top)

The problem is that a school bus stop is legally school territory in Virginia. The principal is notified, who must notify the superintendent, who then may contact the police.

It doesn’t matter if the student was on private property when he fired on students at the bus stop.

Yes, I agree that they are stretching it, but in this case, with several legal contrivances, like the airsoft gun being a “gun”, the letter of the law is on their side.

In a sane place, this would be handled as a school disciplinary manner, but the state of Virginia is weird about guns.

[urbanpovertylawcenter]

that is an arsenal!