SAF Files for Summary Judgment in Illegal Search of Student Case

Growing up in the South, it wasn’t unusual to see shotguns mounted in the back of my friends’ trucks. Not just while tooling around town, either, but in the school parking lot. No one blinked about it at the time, in part because it was a small private school, but also because it was just a way of life down here. People who could would go hunting before school in the morning, come out of the stand or blind to go to class, then go right back after the last bell rang. Assuming, of course, they didn’t have sports practices, which was also pretty common.

I was jealous of their weekday hunts because I had absolutely no way. Our hunting land was something like a two-hour drive.

Anyway, no one blinked at the time, but things are different now. Guns are forbidden on school campuses, which I understand. No one used those shotguns to shoot up our school, but after Columbine, I get it.

But what about deciding that because a student had guns at home, you had probable cause to search his vehicle on campus? That happened, and now the Second Amendment Foundation is filing a motion for summary judgment in the case.

From a press release:

The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) has filed a motion for summary judgment in a case challenging the unconstitutional search of an 18-year-old high school senior’s vehicle that was based solely on the knowledge that he is a legal gun owner.  

The case, Harrington v. Crawford, stems from an unlawful search of Hillsboro-Deering High School student Jack Harrington’s vehicle while it was parked on school grounds. Based only on an overheard conversation that Harrington lawfully owned a firearm, he was subjected to aggressive interrogation which culminated in his vehicle being searched without consent. No firearm was found during the illegal search as it was safely stored at his home, nowhere near the school campus.

“Entirely lawful and constitutionally protected conduct cannot be the grounds for a search,” said SAF Senior Director of Legal Operations Bill Sack. “School officials, especially when accompanied by law enforcement as was the case here, need at minimum reasonable suspicion to search a student’s vehicle. Here, those officials learning that our client was a gun owner gave them that suspicion. They are mistaken. If that were the case, student gun owners all over the country could be subject to repeated and endless harassment.”

As noted in the motion, “Defendants relied upon a week-old, stale report of a single comment made by Jack and overheard by an assistant coach…relating to Jack’s storage of his handgun in the glove box of his truck while at a gas station nowhere near campus – indisputably legal and constitutionally protected conduct. At no point during the interrogation, the search, or at any time since, have defendants brought forth a single shred of evidence of unlawful conduct by Jack. Moreover, defendants confirmed that they did not view Jack as a threat to school safety; they did not believe Jack had a weapon on his person during the interrogation; and Jack had no previous disciplinary issues.”

“District officials – and even a school resource officer who should know better – took it upon themselves to violate the constitutional rights of a peaceable, adult, firearm owner for no other reason than they learned of his status as a gun owner,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “This young man was interrogated and coerced into allowing school officials to search his vehicle because he chooses to exercise his rights as a private citizen. Law enforcement and school officials are required to understand the law and to follow it, and in this case, it appears they failed at both.” 

Look, it might have been one thing if they asked Harrington where his gun was and he’d been evasive or something. They didn’t. They simply figured that since he owned a gun, they had the right to search his private property. Having a gun in a glove box in one place is not probable cause to believe it’s still there.

Owning a firearm is not a sign of anything other than that someone owns a gun. Millions of American youth own a gun to some degree or another, often with the parent technically owning it, but it’s the kids’ gun, and they own it just the same. These are not would-be mass killers. Such people are exceedingly rare and only seem to be more common because gang-bangers who engage in gang warfare are blatantly misreported as mass shooters in tallies of such crimes, which also poorly defines them to boost the numbers, but that’s a discussion for another day.

Harrington offered no signals that he was involved in anything harmful, but officials at many schools don’t view students as people who have their rights. Especially his right against unreasonable search and seizure. Sometimes, it’s out of an abundance of caution, but it’s still a violation of the student’s rights.

Unfortunately, the media’s outright hostility toward gun ownership makes things like this far more probable. They treat gun ownership and possession as a sign that someone is mentally unbalanced. They hype the threat of things like school shootings, even if kids are more likely to die from a lightning strike than a school shooting, and set people on edge.

Scared people don’t respect rights. They trade liberty for security, which is especially easy when it’s not your liberty you’re trading.

I hope the judge grants the summary judgment here, because this was always stupid and should never have happened. People should have been fired over it, too, but barring that, someone should have to pay.

Editor’s Note: The radical Left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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