More Hysteria Over Toy Guns and Non-Guns in Schools

Paranoia
about guns in schools continues unabated. From
NJ.com:

A day after the council in Atlantic City voted to ban the sale
of realistic toy guns, a student in a nearby town was arrested for
bringing a fake firearm to school.

The 15-year-old boy was arrested Wednesday at Mainland High
School after school officials got word there was an object
resembling a gun in his backpack, according
to a report on PressofAtlanticCity.com.

The boy, a resident of Somers Point, was charged with possession
of an imitation firearm in an educational setting, the report
said.

The news story doesn’t explain why the toy was brought to school
or how administrators discovered that it was tucked away in a
backpack. If the teen intended to scare someone with it, then
obviously he should be punished. But these rule violations are
often just accidents: a matter of forgetting to put away a toy
before heading off to school in the morning. It seems awfully cruel
to charge a 15-year-old with a crime for inadvertent behavior that
harmed no one—especially if he did the right thing by telling
a teacher about it. 

Here’s another story that illustrates just how paranoid schools
are about guns. From
The Tennessean:

A student reported that another student possibly had a gun,
which turned out to be prop for the drama department, said
Tullahoma City Schools Superintendent Dan Lawson. …

Tullahoma High School’s lockdown this afternoon has been lifted
after police determined that a report that a student had brought a
handgun to school was not true.

At least nobody is going to jail over this mistake, but still:
Stop the madness! Despite the incessant headlines implying the
contrary, school shootings are not becoming vastly more frequent
(and zero tolerance punishments for accidental breaches of weapons
policies wouldn’t combat them, even if they were).