I’ve seen schools suspend students for some stupid “gun-related” reasons. The dumbest is probably still the kid who got in trouble over a gun-shaped Pop-Tart, but schools keep trying to up that by doing some pretty stupid stuff in the name of “zero tolerance.”
Now, I get having zero tolerance for actual firearms, for actual threats, and things of that sort. I may not necessarily agree with it, in part because I grew up in a time when people would go hunting in the morning before school and have their guns in a gun rack on the back window of their trucks, so my opinions might be skewed a bit.
Yet some schools have sought to punish kids for a lot of stupid reasons, including the aforementioned Pop-Tart. In particular, pictures on social media and other cases where they were disciplined for things that didn’t happen at school at all.
At least those cases involved someone trying to claim an implied threat. This case, though? This case is something else entirely.
Florida Carry, Inc., has filed a lawsuit against the Hillsboro County School District over its decision to suspend a high school student identified in their lawsuit only as “J.S.,” who officials claim brought three spent shell casings into one of their schools.
According to the pro-gun group’s lawsuit, school officials learned of the incident via a message sent to them on the FortifyFL app — a “suspicious activity” reporting tool that allows parents or other students to relay information to “appropriate law enforcement agencies and school officials.”
The school principal told a Hillsborough County Deputy Sheriff working at the school about the FortifyFL message. The deputy sheriff then searched J.S.’s backpack and conducted a pat down of the young student at around 8 a.m., November 21.
“The search revealed three expended metallic casing contained in a Ziploc bag, along with some spare change. The casings had been used while target shooting with J.S.’s parents on a recent excursion,” the lawsuit claims. “The expended casings did not contain any powder, projectiles, shot, bullets, wading, or live primers.”
The deputy sheriff told school officials that J.S. had committed no crime by possessing spent shell casings. The youth, the deputy said, had done nothing wrong. However, the principal ignored the deputy’s claims and called the student’s parents, who arrived about 40 minutes later. The parents were told to take their child home and wait for a phone call.
It seems, though, that because the parents “went to bat” for J.S., the kid caught a suspension because the principal is a vile piece of filth. OK, that last part was my interpretation, but tell me I’m wrong.
Now, the reason for the lawsuit is pretty straightforward. Under Florida law, schools are beholden to certain definitions for things like “guns” and “ammunition.” Spent shell casings don’t fall under that category and the schools can’t change the definition.
There’s also no reason to believe that J.S. intended to use the casing as a weapon or anything else.
What happened was a kid took shell casings to school. You can argue that he didn’t need them at school until you’re blue in the face, but the fact is that kids take all sorts of other things they don’t necessarily need and no one says a thing about it.
I can’t help but believe this is really just an attempt to punish a kid for not being sufficiently afraid of firearms. J.S. wasn’t freaking about the casings or anything of the sort coupled with the fact that his parents didn’t completely buckle in front of the principal’s so-called authority. A lot of principals are dictator wannabes and they don’t like it when they don’t get their way. They can’t punish the parents so they punish the students.
There’s a reason I homeschool.
Of course, it could be something else. Regardless, Florida Carry will see this incident in court and I just don’t see a judge allowing this to stand.
Read the full article here
