Zero Tolerance Weapons Policy strikes again!

[slow944]

When I was a Cub Scout leader a CS had to earn their right to carry a Scout knife before they were allowed to have it with them. So now things have reversed and you can't even posess a knife at all on school grounds?? I remember bringing my Dad's German Officer's Sword for show and tell. LORD HELP US.

 

[MachIVshooter]

Oh how I wish that was more common. I very much dislike going to bars because I come out at the end of the night smelling like an ashtray. I could only tolerate the smoke as long as I was properly, um, sedated. While I could tolerate the smoke after a few drinks it made hitting the dartboard a bit difficult.

Complaining about smoke in a bar is like bitching about the noise at a shooting range. If it bothers you, don't go.

Agreeing with smoking bans is not dissimilar from agreeing with gun control. It's still the government telling you what you can or can't do.

They passed just such a smoking ban here in CO. It irked me, especially knowing that the same folks that voted for it are the kind that will vote in favor of any legislation that doesn't negatively impact them. I will just laugh at these people when they finally pass legislation regulating cell phone useage or some such. Maybe then they'll understand why we should never let the gub'mint decide who can use what and when.

 

[Zen21Tao]

Agreeing with smoking bans is not dissimilar from agreeing with gun control. It's still the government telling you what you can or can't do.

I agree 100%. I personally believe that a business owner should be free to run his or her business as he or she sees fit. People can voice their disagreement with certain policies or practices by taking their business elsewhere. That is how a free market should operate.

 

[Deer Hunter]

I was given corporal punishment for stepping 2 and a half feet into the campus parking lot (one-A school, here. My gradudating class was 42), opening my car door, grabbing my sandwhich, and stepping back "on campus".

I caught hell for it. And this is a public school where just a few years back our principals still carried shotguns in the backs of their trucks. Times have changed in the course of only 8 years. This was in 2007, mind you.

 

[Nolo]

Madness.
How do we fix this stuff?
Madness.

 

[cambeul41]

I must be bad teacher.

Not long ago (given my age, that could be years) a student wore a “Never Take a Knife to a Gun Fight” shirt to class. He later admitted that he had done so to see how I twitched.

My twitch was to compliment him on the shirt and to give him a list of gunfight rules. http://www.thegunzone.com/gunfighting.html

 

[jaholder1971]

All these are reasons my wife and I won't be having children.

I'd be the school's worst nightmare.

 

[Nolo]

All these are reasons my wife and I won't be having children.

Oh, contrare, my friend, these are all excellent reasons for you to have kids. Why? So that you can raise them according to your standards and your values. If you don't raise any children, there'll be some gun-grabbing fiend who will. Carry on the legacy! I will, hopefully tenfold (if my future better half will let me... )

 

[STW]

I've carried a pocket knife virtually every day since the 2nd grade and gave one of those little Swiss Army knives (1.5 inch blade) to our daughters. Oddly enough, one of them had to stop carrying hers when she became a school teacher because of the zero tolerance policy. Even the teachers weren't exempt.

She hasn't quite bought into the theory. She kept a target with many 9mm holes in it on her frig so boys would have the proper respect.

 

[Barr]

I think that this punishment is unjust and undeserved. If the kid just had a pocket knife in his car and not on his person the school should have no grounds for this. If it was a gun in the car for after school hunting the school might have some very shaky ground to stand on but a pocket knife is ridiculous. If he had the knife on his person in the school, they might have had some shaky ground to stand on. It was a multi-tool to boot, can anyone say Leatherman?

 

[jeepmor]

My friends use to brag about how sharp I could get my knife. We'd be in class and someone would say, "Hey man, show them how you can shave your arm hair with your knife again."

In woodshop, it picked many a sliver out of mine and others hands, and it even trimmed some fuzzy dado joint edges because the school did not have the sharpest tools on campus, I did. And no one ever batted an eye because no one was ever in danger.

Having a son on the way now at 37, and having grown up where the rifles and shotguns were proudly displayed in said truck gunrack in highschool, I see future principals and I are probably going to have some long talks.

Why can't our administration concentrate on behavioral issues, not whether or not a student has a implement that can draw blood, but rather whether he has chosen to draw blood or shown intent. America is really starting to suck when I read this kind of poop.

 

[Houston Tom]

I got in trouble once for a pocket knofe at school me and a friend had it out playing chicken (throwing it and seeing how close we could get to the others foot). I got jerked up by the collar dragged to the office got my bottom tanned and my parents called. What waited for me was way worse than prison and I lost the knife. granted I was in 4th grade at.

In HS nearly every vehicle had a rifle or shot gun anf most boys wore a folding buck knife in a sheath.

just sad where we have gotten too

 

[coat4gun]

I have a theory that this kind of "no tolerance" policy is actually creating criminals, not reducing them. All people have a built in sense of what is right and just. The kids know this is wrong and unjust... and falling victim to this type of injustice will push some of them over the edge. I know it boils my blood to hear about it.

This is one of the many reasons that my wife and I have accepted the responsibility of homeschooling both of our sons since kindergarten. One is now an honor student in college and the other will graduate from Homeschooled High School this year. Both have owned knifes since they were 8 and firearms since they were 12.

This madness needs to stop...

 

[GTSteve03]

Time for round #2! When does the madness end? Oh yeah, when we get rid of public school administrators...

http://www.myfoxatlanta.com/myfox/pages/News/Detail?contentId=4285931&version=2&locale=EN-US&layoutCode=TSTY&pageId=3.2.1

Sprayberry H.S. Teen Charged with Felony for Knife at School

Last Edited: Thursday, 06 Sep 2007, 11:41 PM EDT
Created: Thursday, 06 Sep 2007, 10:44 PM EDT

Michael Needham, 17, says he was charged with a felony for unknowingly bringing a knife onto Sprayberry High School's campus.

Reported By: Charles Molineaux

MARIETTA, Ga. (FOX 5) – A high school athlete says Cobb County school police have put his chances of a college scholarship and his entire future on the line over an honest mistake. The student is facing felony charges after a knife was discovered in his car.

Seventeen-year-old Michael Needham said he had nothing to hide when officials at Sprayberry High School did a random search of his Jeep.

The search turned up a buck knife. Needham's father said it was a knife that Needham forgot to remove after a camping trip.

Needham was arrested on felony charges for bringing a weapon onto school property.

"Until I was in jail, I didn't really realize. Wow, I can't believe this is happening," said Needham.

"The absolute punishment is insane. I look at zero tolerance, it's crazy," said Needham's father, Don.

Both father and son said the real trouble has only just begun. Needham was a starter for Sprayberry's football team. Now that he has been charged with a felony, he has now been banned from the team, just when he could be trying to win scholarships for college.

"I'm suspended for 10 days, I understand that, but to throw away the rest of my life for having a knife that I didn't know about?" said Needham.

Sprayberry administrators said they couldn't comment on a student's disciplinary issues. A Cobb County School representative said bringing the knife to the school was simply against the law and the law doesn't give the school any discretion.

A school system spokesperson said that if the circumstances were innocent, a judge should understand and reduce the charges but Needham and his father said that every day they wait, it endangers his chances.

"As seniors, we have meeting about schools and scholarships and things for the future, and I don't know what lies in my future because of this," said Needham.

Needham was arrested two weeks ago and he has been sidelined ever since.

Needham's father said the case was assigned to a district attorney and a judge Thursday and they hope to get the charges straightened out before the nine weeks of the high school football season run out.

Ruining future college careers, helping to create a society of young felons, this is madness!

 

[SteveS]

In MI, the zero-tolerance policies are coming from the legislature. Following Columbine, they wanted to be seen as 'doing something.' While I am sure that there are some schools that would institute them on their own, I know there are plenty that don't like being made to enforce them.

 

[Mannix]

What the heck was he charged with? He had a pocket knife, and it wasn't even on his person!

This stuff is so stupid :banghead:.

 

[juantew]

Zero tolerance policy strikes again

He got suspended? Around here carrying a blade to school carries a four year prison term.

It's so bad that even the twenty-somethings don't even understand why one would want to carry a pocket knife. Much less, pack.

 

[Badkharma]

I graduated HS in 1999 - not THAT long ago - and all thru school swiss army knives were standard fare. Nothing ever happened.

In fact, get this: our high school class of 180+ (the boys only - girls got something else, forget what) got FULL SIZED LEATHERMAN tools, complete with the blades, yes. They had our school name and graduating year imprinted on the handle. It was awesome, I still have it and keep it as a back-up tool in my car. This was a gift FROM the school itself. And one step further, it was a private christian school...

Times sure have changed. And not for the better.

 

[Avenger]

I carried my pocketknife in school from about the middle of second grade on. Not only did I not get in trouble for having it, the one time I got in big trouble, the principal told me, "Now take your knife outta your back pocket so I won't break it with the paddle." I'd been sitting since before he entered the room.

OMG I just remembered, in middle school our 8th grade shop project was to make stocks for CROSSBOW KITS. The principal (not the same as the grade school one) actually suggested this! In retrospect it wasn't so smart, as the last day of school resulted in the backstop of the baseball field getting kinda perforated....

 

[Officers'Wife]

The more I read about the excesses in public schools the happier I am about being homeschooled.

 

[gyp_c2]

ha...

...if this had happened when I was in school, whoever was responsible would have had their ass handed them by my Mother...
...I shudder to think what would have happened if the Male Parental Unit got wind of it...He'd have kicked my ass for not kicking their asses...geez...
What a buncha' horse-hockey...

 

[RioShooter]

Childhood memories

Gregory Peck talks about how when he was 12 he used to run around the woods and fields with his 22 rifle

I did that with my cousin and his friends. One of my best childhood memories. To put this is perspective, that was in 1963.

 

[gfd_703]

1980 was the year, my AG teacher actually required every student in his class to have and carry a pocket knife. He would even have knife checks. Our senior year for homecoming each class dressed as a different group, we were cowboys. I carried a pair of colts and a 12 gage double around all day.
Now get this we loaded blanks the night before and had gun fights in the hall between class. That afternoon after school was the parade. One classmate's dad was the bank pres,so with his help we robbed the bank on the way by and left town with money bags full of shreaded paper. Knives were often given as prizes in school contest. Every year the Ag class gave our advisor a gift, one year it was a Marlin lever action. I took up the collection and went to the hardware store and bought it myself. He was so proud he took it around and showed it to the other teachers and kept it hanging on his office wall at school. How did we get where we are now?

 

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

During high school I kept a single-shot .410 in the trunk of my car that I'd use (or at least try to use) to take doves and/or rabbits after school. Interestingly, I never thought about killing anyone with it.

But this particular incident reminds me of a similar one that happened in the Dallas area a few year back. A high school kid (an honors student with an exemplary academic and behavior record) had been installing new speakers in the rear deck of his car the night before school. He was using a little steak knife to strip the speaker wire insulation and forgot to pick it up from the rear floor where he'd dropped it last. The next morning the school rent-a-cop was patrolling the parking lot, peering in through student car windows when he spotted the steak knife. The principal was notified and, in accordance with a similar "no tolerance" district policy the honors student in question was suspended and forced to attend an alternative school (read, "school for dead-beat thugs") for the remainder of the year. Completely screwed up his academics, and all because of a policy that did not allow for any human judgement or common sense.

 

[USAFNoDAk]

I guess after they found the knife, they quit looking for any more weapons. That would explain how they missed the 2 foot tire iron in the trunk, used to jack up the car, pop the hub caps and remove the lug nuts. Which is a more dangerous weapon; a knife with a 3 inch blade or a 2 foot combo tire iron, lug wrench? I know which one I'd rather face in a fight. Sheesh. This is just nutso, especially when the knife was in his car, not on his person. Most people have a very dangerous tire iron/lug wrench in their car too. When do they start the unannounced searches to round them up from students' cars?. This is bizzarro world.