Gene Beasley
New member
From the NY Times
The parents of two Montclair, N.J., students said yesterday that the school district allowed gun control advocates to distribute leaflets in classrooms in support of pending state legislation, then refused to allow distribution of leaflets opposing the measure.
The parents have threatened to file a civil rights lawsuit against the district, with the backing of the New Jersey affiliate of the National Rifle Association.
The father, John Montenigro, a member of the association, said his 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son came home from school in June with a flier, distributed by the Million Moms organization, in support of a bill in the State Senate, S-2045, which would require so-called smart gun technology once it is available. (The technology could include chips programmed to recognize a handgun's owner and keep the gun from firing in a stranger's hand.)
Mr. Montenigro, 48, and his wife, Joan Furlong Montenigro, 41, are active in promoting gun safety classes in schools and said they had taught their daughter to shoot. Mr. Montenigro, whose family business makes gun grease used by the military, said he and his wife opposed the bill because they think the technology will be unreliable.
Before the fliers supporting the bill were distributed, two students in Montclair were arrested for buying guns with false identification they had obtained on the Internet. In reaction to the fliers, Mrs. Montenigro said, she formed her own group, Moms for Gun Safety. She said that as part of its activities it had asked permission to post fliers publicizing a rally in opposition to S-2045, and to give the fliers to students to take home.
The school district gave permission to Moms for Gun Safety to post the fliers but not to hand them out. Mrs. Montenigro said the school district had ignored her efforts to start a gun safety program in the schools, a decision she said reflected Montclair's left-wing bias.
"Whether you're talking about education or you're talking about this bill, the attitude was, `We don't want to hear it,' " she said. "People here like to think it's a fairly tolerant community, but it isn't."
Bryan Miller, president of Ceasefire New Jersey, a group that supports the gun bill, said Moms for Gun Safety was controlled by the National Rifle Association and its state affiliate, which have become "very clever of late" in using mothers to oppose gun laws. "This has nothing to do with gun safety," he said.
The Montenigros plan to hold a news conference in Newark today with members of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, the state N.R.A. affiliate, to announce that Mr. Montenigro will file a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments' guarantees of free speech and equal protection.
The Montclair school superintendent, Dr. Michael Osnato, did not dispute the couple's version of events, and he conceded that the district's Office of Instruction might not have given Moms for Gun Safety equal time. "In this particular instance, there was not a consideration of that by the people that handled it," he said. "We should not be taking political positions."
Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, said the Montenigros appeared to have a solid case. "This is a typical situation where a school has created a forum for speech," she said, "and then discriminated based on the content of the speech."
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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and thus clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken
The parents of two Montclair, N.J., students said yesterday that the school district allowed gun control advocates to distribute leaflets in classrooms in support of pending state legislation, then refused to allow distribution of leaflets opposing the measure.
The parents have threatened to file a civil rights lawsuit against the district, with the backing of the New Jersey affiliate of the National Rifle Association.
The father, John Montenigro, a member of the association, said his 9-year-old daughter and 5-year-old son came home from school in June with a flier, distributed by the Million Moms organization, in support of a bill in the State Senate, S-2045, which would require so-called smart gun technology once it is available. (The technology could include chips programmed to recognize a handgun's owner and keep the gun from firing in a stranger's hand.)
Mr. Montenigro, 48, and his wife, Joan Furlong Montenigro, 41, are active in promoting gun safety classes in schools and said they had taught their daughter to shoot. Mr. Montenigro, whose family business makes gun grease used by the military, said he and his wife opposed the bill because they think the technology will be unreliable.
Before the fliers supporting the bill were distributed, two students in Montclair were arrested for buying guns with false identification they had obtained on the Internet. In reaction to the fliers, Mrs. Montenigro said, she formed her own group, Moms for Gun Safety. She said that as part of its activities it had asked permission to post fliers publicizing a rally in opposition to S-2045, and to give the fliers to students to take home.
The school district gave permission to Moms for Gun Safety to post the fliers but not to hand them out. Mrs. Montenigro said the school district had ignored her efforts to start a gun safety program in the schools, a decision she said reflected Montclair's left-wing bias.
"Whether you're talking about education or you're talking about this bill, the attitude was, `We don't want to hear it,' " she said. "People here like to think it's a fairly tolerant community, but it isn't."
Bryan Miller, president of Ceasefire New Jersey, a group that supports the gun bill, said Moms for Gun Safety was controlled by the National Rifle Association and its state affiliate, which have become "very clever of late" in using mothers to oppose gun laws. "This has nothing to do with gun safety," he said.
The Montenigros plan to hold a news conference in Newark today with members of the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, the state N.R.A. affiliate, to announce that Mr. Montenigro will file a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging violations of the First and Fourteenth Amendments' guarantees of free speech and equal protection.
The Montclair school superintendent, Dr. Michael Osnato, did not dispute the couple's version of events, and he conceded that the district's Office of Instruction might not have given Moms for Gun Safety equal time. "In this particular instance, there was not a consideration of that by the people that handled it," he said. "We should not be taking political positions."
Deborah Jacobs, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, said the Montenigros appeared to have a solid case. "This is a typical situation where a school has created a forum for speech," she said, "and then discriminated based on the content of the speech."
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“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed—and thus clamorous to be led to safety—by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”—H.L. Mencken
