Even just saying the word ‘gun’ can now get you suspended from school in some cases.
An 11-year-old from Calvert County, Md. was suspended from school for 10 days back in December for suggesting that he wanted a gun to protect his fellow students while riding on a school bus.
The sixth grader was talking with some friends about the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, when he told his friends “I wish I had a gun to protect everyone,” the boy’s father, Bruce Henkelman, told WMAL radio.
“He wanted to be the hero,” Henkelman added.
After the bus driver heard the boy talking about a gun, he took him back to Northern Middle School, where he was questioned by the principal and a sheriff’s deputy and given the suspension. The deputy later attempted to search the boy’s home, but left after the elder Henkelman answered all the man’s questions.
The suspension was, however, later reduced from ten days down to just one.
Even them American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Maryland has gotten involved on Henkelman’s behalf, agreeing that school administrators used poor judgment in this case, according to WMAL.
“It’s appropriate for school officials to investigate when there is a concern about student safety,” Sonya Kumar, a staff attorney for the ACLU told WMAL. “But based on what’s been described to us, once the school official concluded that all the young man wanted to do was to be safe at school and that he posed no risk to anyone, the suspension was really inappropriate.”
Kumar also noted that this is not the only case of school administrators overreacting to a harmless gun-related incident.
“Across the board, we are concerned about practices where we have these sort of knee-jerk reactions without really stopping to think and use our common sense about whether what a kid is doing or saying actually presents any sort of concern for the safety and well-being of others,” she added.
The elder Henkleman decided to go public with his son’s story after a 5-year-old boy in the same county was suspended and interrogated for bringing a toy cap gun on the school bus.
In March, an eight-year-old Maryland was suspended from school for inadvertently chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. The boy actually received a lifetime membership from the National Rifle Association for his work of edible art.
