Official academic hoplophobia reached new levels when a school worker, attempting to contact a student to confirm a doctor’s appointment, misheard his voicemail message and called police in panic, WPXI Pittsburgh reported last Friday. The message, the theme song from actor Will Smith’s old “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air” situation comedy, resulted in schools across Beaver Country, Penn., being placed on lockdown, and police detaining “the 19-year-old student for three hours while searching his locker, before determining that it was all one big misunderstanding.”
“The worker said she called police when she misheard the lyrics -- which she claimed said ‘shooting people outside of school,’" the report related. “The actual lyrics to the song say ‘shooting some b-ball outside of school.’"
Take a moment and behold the fearsomeness.
This extreme, irrational terror was demonstrated recently when a seven-year-old was suspended for biting a strawberry tart into what his teacher deemed the shape of a gun. Other students, as this column has observed, have gotten into trouble for drawing a gun, having a gun photo on a laptop, having a gun-shaped piece of paper, wearing an “offensive” t-shirt and even pointing a finger, as well as having a toy gun. And the addition of bubbles to the mix actually got one five-year-old branded a “terrorist threat.”
That school administrators are fearful, particularly with the post-Newtown political and media frenzy keeping school shootings fresh in everyone’s minds, is understandable, but they and teachers’ groups are also, except for a few pockets of sanity, the biggest opponents of doing the one thing necessary to deny mass shooters their goal of success, ending “gun free” murderer-enablement zones. Until that happens, schools will continue to be exploitable areas of vulnerability, the paranoia will only intensify and spread, and students, like the hapless Fresh Prince fan, will continue to have their lives endangered by the very “public servants” who supposedly exist to help educate and keep them safe.
------------
My latest GUNS Magazine "Rights Watch" column is now online. Click here to read "A Shotgun Approach," starring noted defensive gun use expert Joe Biden.
If you're a regular Gun Rights Examiner reader and believe it provides news and perspectives you won't find in the mainstream media, please subscribe to this column and help spread the word by sharing links, promoting it on social media like Facebook (David Codrea) and Twitter (@dcodrea), and telling your like-minded friends about it. And for more commentary, be sure to visit "The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance."
Comments