Enough is enough for Texas Rep. Steve Stockman when it comes to punishing children who play with imaginary weapons at recess.
The Republican legislator, who earlier this year made waves when he brought Ted Nugent to the State of the Union and last week raffled off an assault rifle, introduced a bill Monday that would block federal funding to schools that punish students for “harmless expressions of childhood play” like playing with imaginary guns.
The Student Protection Act also states that these “so-called ‘zero-tolerance’ weapons policies in federally-funded schools are being used to outlaw harmless expressions of childhood play” and “to teach children to be afraid of inanimate objects that are shaped like guns.”
Stockman acknowledged that he introduced the bill as a result of the increased number of incidents nationwide in which students have been punished for pointing their fingers like guns at other students. He referenced the irrational punishment of a 3-year-old deaf boy in Nebraska who was asked to change his name because it resembled a gun when spelled in sign language, as well as a 7-year-old Colorado boy who was suspended for throwing an imaginary hand grenade and a 14-year-old from Kentucky who had been suspended for wearing a National Rifle Association jersey to school.
Two 6-year-old elementary school students were suspended for using their fingers as imaginary guns and a second grader in Virginia was suspended for pointing a pencil at another student this year as well.
“This government-sanctioned political correctness is traumatizing children and spreading irrational fear,” the bill reads.
Other behaviors covered under the bill include playing with a squirt gun and “brandishing a pastry or other food which is partly consumed in such a way that the remnant resembles a gun,” a direct reference to the 8-year-old Maryland boy who recently received a lifetime membership to the NRA for chewing his pop-tart into the shape of a handgun.
