Lawmakers were quick to begin their legislative overreaction to the shooting in Newtown, Conn.: the calls for gun control measures that would have done nothing to avert the tragic shooting (including the fingerprinting of all gun buyers) and lockdown-style school safety measures that would make grade schools resemble prisons.

But it isn’t just lawmakers who have abandoned sober thinking for abject panic. School officials at Roscoe R. Nix Elementary in Montgomery County suspended a 6-year-old student for something nearly everyone does as a child. He formed his thumb and finger into an L-shape resembling a gun, pointed it at another student and said, “Pow!” This kid needed a talking-to, and perhaps a note home to his parents. Suspension was totally uncalled for.