Fearing Gun Trouble, School Suspends Kids

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Skyhawk

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Fearing Gun Trouble, School Suspends Kids

Updated 1:44 PM ET April 6, 2000
SAYREVILLE, N.J. (Reuters) - Admittedly overcautious after last year's Columbine High School massacre and a rash of other school shootings, officials suspended four New Jersey kindergarten children for pointing fingers at each other as mock guns in an apparent game of "cops and robbers." The 6-year-old boys were suspended for three days after the March 15 incident during lunch recess in the playground at Wilson School in Sayreville, a waterfront community of 35,000 people.

The local Home News Tribune newspaper reported in April 6 editions that one of the children shouted to another, "Boom! I have a bazooka and I want to shoot you."

Parents of the suspended children and others of the school's 480 students feel the penalty was too severe. But Dennis Fyffe, assistant superintendent for the Sayreville School District said Thursday that the disciplinary action by principal Georgia Baumann was justified after several children came to teachers "visibly upset" by the incident.

"This was not just a game of cops and robbers," Fyffe told Reuters. "We did not just observe kids playing and decide to suspend them. We're not irrational people here going off the deep end because of some children playing."

Fyffe said the incident involved serious threats but he refused to disclose details, citing confidentiality. He said the incident happened just weeks after threats at the school that prompted the principal to counsel children.

Fyffe acknowledged that officials were overly cautious following a number of school shootings in the United States, particularly the April 1999 Columbine High School massacre in Littleton, Colorado, in which two of the school's students shot dead 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves. Twenty-three others were wounded.

"We're being beat up big time for this," Fyffe said. "But in light of what happened at Columbine, I'm going to take the more conservative view and avoid a catastrophe rather than have a tragedy."

Suspending the children was too extreme and deprived the children of their right to education, said Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the New Jersey chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union in Newark, New Jersey.

http://news.excite.com/news/r/000406/13/news-crime-school

[This message has been edited by Skyhawk (edited April 06, 2000).]
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by Skyhawk:
... We're not irrational people here going off the deep end because of some children playing ...[/quote]I think this country is going off the deep end. I remember growing up, we played cops & robbers, cowboys & indians, war (americans against the germans), etc. We went around with toy guns (some which looked very much like real guns because they didn't have those red things on the end of them) and cap gun (some which sounded as loud as a .22) "shooting" each other around the neighborhood and in the schoolyard. Sometimes even the nuns joined in. Thirty years later, we're suspending kids from school because they pointed a finger at somebody and said "bang"?

I would like somebody to explain to me why we had so much less gun violence 30 and 40 years ago when there were no background checks on gun purchases and you could even buy a gun in the mail with no questions asked? Could it possibly be that gun control doesn't work in reducing gun violence and maybe even has the opposite effect?

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About time for some new "finger control' laws to put an end to this type of thing.

"We did not just observe kids playing and decide to suspend them. :confused: We're not irrational people here going off the deep end because of some children playing."

If the kids weren't suspended because of what was observed, why were they suspended at all? If this isn't irrational, what would be?

Anybody live near enough to this shangri-la to tell us what's up there?
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>We're not irrational people here going off the deep end because of some children playing."[/quote]

Pardon my Anglo-Saxon, ladies.

BULLS**T!

Those children were doing the same damn thing that children have done since pre-history.

And you spineless, two-timing, four-flushing crayfish suspended kindergarteners, kindergarteners for God's sake, for doing the exact same thing that you did when you were their age!!!!

Every single friggin' one of the male members of that Godforsaken pismire of a school did the exact same thing when they were children.

And if they want to deny it, I'll call them liars to their faces.

Not only are you people irrational, you're bloody well insane.

Thank God I don't have any kids, but I'll tell you this and you can write in the Book:

When I do have kids, they will do what children have done since Time began. And if some two-bit, Politically Correct, Socialist jelly-fish decides to suspend them for doing what comes naturally, I'm going to stomp a mudhole in his butt and walk it dry.

I'll take the two-hundred dollar fine for fighting and consider it money well spent.

Morons.
:mad:LawDog
 
<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>"This was not just a game of cops and robbers," Fyffe told Reuters. "We did not just observe kids playing and decide to suspend them. We're not irrational people here going off the deep end because of some children playing."[/quote]

If this is not totally irrational, I would hate to see the real thing! I just want to know what these reactionaries think is irrational, maybe cutting off the kid's fingers? That would certainly stop this dangerous finger pointing. These people have no business working with young people!
 
These people are afraid of their own shadow.
I wonder what it is in THEIR mushy little minds that they a really afraid of?
7
 
Yet another example of why you need to get your kids out of Government Schools (they aren't "public". The restrooms at Wal-Mart are "public" - privately owned and operated, and open to the public. Most schools are Government owned and operated).

People wouldn't put up with this sort of nonsense at a private school. These morons would be asking "would you like fries with that" in a heartbeat.

[This message has been edited by JimR (edited April 06, 2000).]
 
Well, obviously, the solution is to simply strap all children to their desks from the time they enter the building until the time the day-care provider picks them up. Don't give me any BS about how they need to eat, we'll simply feed them thru an IV tube, while we use the opportunity to do a drug test, harvest a DNA sample and administer the daily dose of Ritalin or Prozac (whichever's cheaper). Since when are there any regulations about the amount of time children need to roam away from their desks? It's an unproductive waste of time and children could be hurt.

Think the above is ridiculous? Don't you think the finger pointing story would have been unheard of even ten years ago? I say if you treat kids like convicts, do not be surprised when they start acting like convicts.
 
If the kids had pointed their "social" fingers at each other they would have been defended as being budding rap stars.
 
I keep waiting for the call from the poor sap of a school administrator who has the misfortune of having to deal with me over a similar incident. I have two sons, 7 and 5, who love daddy's guns (and yes, they know that they are MINE and not THEIRS), and I suspect that they might just point a "finger gun" at someone else one day, just like I and my two brothers did growing up. And, as was mentioned, just like all of THEM did growing up as well.

Jackasses.
 
From what I saw on CNBC they couldn't believe the school did this either. Where are the parents? Why are they not speaking out? I am outraged and I don't have children.
 
My childhood speciality was the .38 caliber banana
There was many a drive by fruiting when i was in the back of the station wagon.

The PA turnpike was a battle zone

i suppose if i flashed a Chicita today i would do hard time.

dZ
 
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