Are you fucking kidding me?! [tiny LEGO gun in school]

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/35234742/ns/today-today_people/

I'm with the parents 100% on this. That principal is a complete dipshit.

I suppose it's abit over the top considering it was a toy policeman (though it doesn't really explain what he was doing with the toy). But threatening to sue over it is just ridiculous.

Who cares what he was doing with the toy? The fact of the matter is that it was a toy. Maybe I could understand if it was one of those plastic pop guns or whatever, but this was a 2-inch plastic little lint covered piece of junk. This is beyond idiotic.

I'm just glad they didn't suspend the kid.

Krispavera said:

Who cares what he was doing with the toy? The fact of the matter is that it was a toy.

If he's aiming the thing at a kid and saying "POW you're dead!" or somesuch, he could do with his parents teaching him just how dangerous a firearm is, but certainly not a lecture from a principal, a threat of suspension and cofiscating the thing. Play exists for a reason.

I suppose if that were the case then some parental discipline would be the best route. Honestly though, my buddies and I used to play guns (you know, without getting caught) on the playground everyday at recess, and I'm sure none of us are psychopathic killers.

Meh. This is one of those short articles that gives a half-assed description of the events so that you get excited one way or the other. In this case it's loaded (like a gun!) toward making the school look bad. It's intriguing to see how much news is basically random garbage with little more than entertainment value.

Perhaps the principle was offended because the length of the toy gun reminded him of his.

BTW, that's pretty big for a LEGO gun :-p

It's a woman

The toy was confiscated by principal Evelyn Mastroianni, whose husband was gunned down by the LEGO mafia in 2005, and took personal offense to the toy.

Then it reminded her -or compared favorably- with her husband's "gun". It's always something.

DuckReconMajor said:

It's a woman

Yeah, well I was shot in the face with a Nerf gun and almost blinded. You don't see me trying to ban Nerf.

One day I brought one of those little "POW" flag guns, which didn't really look like a gun as much as a lumpy folded metal tube with a cheesy plastic handle. I was in like 3rd grade maybe. They took it away for the rest of the school year, but surprisingly that was one of the only toys I got back from the "shit teacher took from me" drawer. I lost my rubber snakes and the nose pencil sharpener.

Teachers were jerks.

What an overreacting principal in school...IT'S A FUCKING TOY FOR GOD'S SAKE! Does she really think such a thing will hurt someone the way a real gun would?

Fuck you America and your overreacting hippie school system.

OH NO A TINY TOY GUN THAT MEANS HE IS GOING TO KILL EVERYONE OH SHIT OH MAN OH GOD!!!!! AHHHHHHHH!!!!

I bet that's what the principal thought.

Mr. Chris said:

Fuck you America and your overreacting hippie school system.

Zero-tolerance is not exactly "hippie". More like the opposite end of the spectrum. "Toy guns are banned. This is a toy gun. No ifs, no buts, no exceptions."

This is in a long string of similar decisions. Like when a kid was suspended for having brought aspirin because he or she (I don't remember) was having chronic headaches. "No tolerance on drugs! You're suspended!"

He should have come better prepared.

This is where "Zero Tolerance" policy gets us, and I've always felt was a totally ridiculous concept.

I used to travel a fair amount as a kid.

Adding it all up I think I attended seven schools before finally moving on to university. This story reminds me distinctly of the difficult time I had integrating into school life in Edmonton, Canada.
Not long after I had arrived there, I was suspended for "refusing" to sing the Canadian national anthem during assembly one morning, when of course I simply didn't know it. Only the Australian one. I guess that particular event contributed to the general distain I currently hold for happenings such as this one here.

I read about this yesterday... It may me laugh pretty hard. The "straight A's to the NRA!" quote is hilarious in that the principal actually used that! I mean first: it's not exactly witty or funny, and second: why would you try to crack a joke when telling a parent that the child's gotten in trouble? I mean... wow.

Of course, the idea of suing over this is equally insane. Meeting with her lawyer:

"So, I want to sue this school! What they did was irrational and insulting!" -Mother

"Um.... You're joking, right? This is is a joke." -Lawyer

You don’t traumatize a child who loved to go to school, who wanted to be early every day to school, you don’t make him cry, you don’t make him fill out statements

Pretty much nailed it. Even now in college, I went from straight-A student to a bit of a neurotic mess because of the way I was treated in elementary school post-Columbine.

I, however, completely got away with making a wooden rifle for shop class when I was in high school.

2 inches? Seriously, does that even LOOK like it could be used to intimidate someone?

Coopersville said:

I, however, completely got away with making a wooden rifle for shop class when I was in high school.

Heh, my dad made a wooden cannon back in his high school shop class. Of course this was back in the 1960s...

myk said:

Meh. This is one of those short articles that gives a half-assed description of the events so that you get excited one way or the other. In this case it's loaded (like a gun!) toward making the school look bad. It's intriguing to see how much news is basically random garbage with little more than entertainment value.

http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/education/2010/02/04/2010-02-04_big_trouble_over_this_tiny_toy_mom_fuming_at_a_lack_of_common_sense_as_son_buste.html

Longer.

That link is far too long for the forum software here, it breaks it.
Here's the tinyurl version: http://tinyurl.com/yhdrgyu

Also, it is wrong and bad to poke fun of people for how they look. However, this is the principal's mugshot:

Yeah, I don't think either she's related to Chiara.

An amusing editorial from the same site; this time with an URL short enough for the forum not to mangle it:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2010/02/05/2010-02-05_gun_nut.html

Maybe if it was a K'Nex gun* he could have gotten away :P.











*Yes, you can make guns with K'Nex.

All the boys in my 1st grade class would end up suspended if a fucktard like that saw what we were drawing in art class, or building with our legos for that matter.

Gunz and war and lazers and spaceships etc.

Technician said:
Longer.

Not really. But why the fuck is it even news? It even says it was sorted out and the kid wasn't punished after a meeting with the parents. "The principal took my kid's toy away, fire her forever and make her burn in hell!" An eye for an eye over an overreaction. Then again, the parent is an ex-cop. Maybe he used some connections to get it into the news.

Overreacting to an overreaction.

Shaikoten said:

One day I brought one of those little "POW" flag guns, which didn't really look like a gun as much as a lumpy folded metal tube with a cheesy plastic handle. I was in like 3rd grade maybe. They took it away for the rest of the school year, but surprisingly that was one of the only toys I got back from the "shit teacher took from me" drawer. I lost my rubber snakes and the nose pencil sharpener.

Teachers were jerks.

Way back when, I had a teacher take my plastic robot thinghy because some other kid bugged me so much to look at it, I gave in and let him check it out and the teacher took it when he wouldn't stop messing with it. Thinking I would never get it back, I went and got it from the teacher's desk when she left the class. She never noticed it was missing either.

I could sorta understand Kathy Griffin's side had he brought something like this to school. But come on, it's a lego toy gun. He's not going to shove it into some kid's eye, not when there are pencils lying around.

Also, I want blueprints for the lego guns, especially the minigun one.

Khorus said:

I suppose it's abit over the top considering it was a toy policeman (though it doesn't really explain what he was doing with the toy). But threatening to sue over it is just ridiculous.

Not really, stupid people some times just need to be saved from themselves, sueing them might actually be doing them a favor.

Good grief. If someone menaced me with a Lego gun, I would just feel insulted.

My 11 year old brother has in his possession a pretty sweet Lego helicopter. It's got missiles, machine guns, and Lego dudes who rope down out of the sides. How much trouble would that boy be if he brought that to school?