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News reports like these make it seem that wolves would probably do a better job of running American public schools than its grotesquely overpaid administrators do. These incidents have their funny side, but administrators are terrorizing and traumatizing students because of a national media panic and their own incompetence.

Case 1: The Nerf Gun unleashes a panic that makes Cold War nuke drills seem mild by comparison.
A Bronx school building was temporarily locked down Tuesday morning after a 12-year-old boy was overheard talking about his "Nerf" gun, police said.

The student, whose identity has not been released, told a classmate about the toy, police said. The conversation was overheard, however, and school officials were notified.

That's when a principal at the campus - which houses the Leadership Institute, P.S. 4, and M.S. 4 - called a lockdown of the facilities after hearing about the rumor, a Department of Education spokeswoman said.

Students said the principal broadcast a pre-established code word over the campus public address system to tell them to hide.

"I was in the cafeteria eating and then they gave out the secret code for an intruder in the building," said 10-year-old Kendolyn Garner, whose mother prevented her from revealing the secret word. "Everybody had to go under the table and everybody had to make a plan for what we had to do if the intruder came into the cafeteria.

"Me and my best friend, we were just thinking what would our parents do if we got killed," she added.

Perry Frazier, who is in fifth-grade, was eating breakfast when he heard the code word and knew to hide because he and his classmates had practiced the procedure before.

"But this wasn't a drill," Perry said. "Everybody was hiding under the table. All the girls were crying. Our teacher was scared."

Jacklyn Williams, whose two children attend schools in the building, received a panicked phone call from her 9-year-old daughter after she wasn't allowed in the facility.

"She called home and said the school was locked down. Nobody knew what was happening," Williams, whose 11-year-old daughter was inside the building at the time, said. "I got worried."

Aricelis Arroyo, whose 10-year-old daughter and 13-year-old son attend P.S. 4, rushed to the school after hearing about the lockdown.

"When I got there I heard there was a report of a gun and they had the majority of the children in the lunch room," Arroyo said. "I was hysterical. I was trying to contain myself from crying."

Cops raced to the building and, after an investigation, found that the boy had left the toy weapon at home. A school official addressed reporters outside about 10:20 a.m. and said the incident had been resolved.

No one was injured, the official added, and parents had the option of picking up their children early or leaving them at school for the rest of the day.

"Nerf" guns shoot harmless foam darts and are sold in bright colors, which distinguish them from lethal weapons.
School shootings are comparatively rare. Nevertheless school administrators and bureaucrats have decided to terrorize small children by telling them that they could be killed at any moment while making them memorize code words for run and hide.

This isn't Israel. There's no justification for inflicting this insanity on children. 9 year olds should not have to hide in terror every time someone overhears a 12 year old mentioning a Nerf gun.

This is a state of terror manufactured by the media in which politicians and useless school bureaucrats are wholly complicit.

Schools should have emergency responses to a shooter that do not involve kids unless there is actual information that a school shooting is about to take place or is taking place. There should not be code words and the mere suspicion of the possession of a handgun on campus should not result in WW3.

Case 2. The 5 year old and the Lego gun
A 5-year-old boy in Massachusetts may be suspended after he reportedly built a toy gun out of Legos during an after-school program.

A few days ago, his parents received a letter that said the boy has received his first written warning for using toys inappropriately, and that upon a second written warning, he will be suspended from the program for two weeks.

The principal of Hyannis West Elementary told Fox 25 "we need a safe enviornment for our students," and said: "While someone might think that making a Lego gun is just an action of a 5-year-old, to other 5-year-olds, that might be a scary experience."
Shockingly enough little boys like to play with guns. The only reason other children would think it's a scary experience is because they've been terrorize. Now another overpaid educational bureaucrat is talking about suspending a 5-year-old boy for making a Lego gun to create "a safe environment."

This is the kind of insanity Sweden or Norway used to be known for. Now we're hip deep in it. That and campaigns to make Easy-Bake-Ovens for boys.

Case 3. The Hello Kitty Bubble Gun of Death and a 5-Year-Old Girl
On Jan. 10, a five-year-old girl stood in a bus line with her friends and they discussed the merits of a princess bubble blower compared to a Hello Kitty bubble gun. The little girl extolled the virtues of the Hello Kitty toy, and said, "I'll shoot you, you shoot me and we'll all play together."

According to a report by CNN, the next day, the kindergartner was not only called into the principal's office at her school in Pennsylvania, she also was suspended for 10 days for a "terrorist threat." Then, to add insult to injury, the child and her mother had to meet a counselor

On Saturday, Mount Carmel Area School District Superintendent Bernard Stellar released a statement, saying, "The Mount Carmel Area School District takes the well-being and safety of students and staff very seriously. In discipline matters, all circumstances are taken into consideration when arriving at decisions. It is the vision of the Mount Carmel Area Educational Community to create a safe learning environment that nurtures the intellectual, social, emotional, and physical wellbeing of each child."
There it is again. Safe learning environment. Is there anything safe about kindergarteners being terrorized by gun-mad administrators?

Case 4. The 6-year-old and the Finger of Death
The parents of a 6-year-old Silver Spring boy are fighting the first-grader's suspension from a Montgomery County public school for pointing his finger like a gun and saying "pow," an incident school officials characterized in a disciplinary letter as a threat "to shoot a student."

The first-grader was suspended for one day, Dec. 21. The family's attorney filed an appeal Wednesday, asking that the incident be expunged from the boy's school record amid concerns of long-term fallout.

The boy "had no intention to shoot anyone," said attorney Robin Ficker, who described the child as soft-spoken, with no propensity for violence. "He's skinny and meek. In his words, he was playing.

School officials later offered more detail, responding in a letter that an assistant principal had warned one parent that the child's behavior could lead to a suspension. At school, a counselor "had an extended conversation" with the child to emphasize "the inappropriateness of using objects to make shooting gestures," and an assistant principal had talked to the boy about the "seriousness" of the issue, the letter said.

"Yet, after the meeting with the counselor and assistant principal, [the boy] chose to point his finger at a female classmate and say 'Pow,' " wrote Judith S. Bresler, the school system's attorney.
And then the bodies began to pile up.

Case 5. The Paper-Gun and the Little Girl
Melody Valentin's grandfather had made her the "gun" - which resembled a piece of paper with a chunk torn out of it - the day before, and she stuck it in her pocket and forgot about it, WTXF-TV reported. When she went to throw it out in class the next day, another student spotted it and called her out. A school administrator was summoned, and Melody was reprimanded for having the paper.

"He yelled at me and said I shouldn't have brought the gun to school and I kept telling him it was a paper gun but he wouldn't listen," she told the station. The administrator allegedly threatened to have her arrested, and other students called her a "murderer."

Melody's mother, Dianna Kelly, is furious and has been keeping her daughter out of class to avoid harassment. She said she wants to pull her out of the school permanently.

"Why did he threaten my daughter? Why did you stand over my daughter and tell her that you should call the cops on her? 'You can be arrested?' Why were you trying to scare her?" Kelly said.
It's the administrator who should have been arrested. That's true for most of these cases. This demented hysteria about guns victimizes and terrorizes students.

It's time for it to end.