In the past, kids in America have been suspended for gun play and mock gun-fights, but it has become more serious now according to reports from the Columbus Dispatch.
The principal of a Columbus elementary school, suspended a student for three days last week after the child pointed a “lookalike firearm” at another student in class and pretended to shoot.
The suspension letter more formally referred to his weapon as a “level 2 lookalike firearm,” according to the report.
The principal maintains that students have been frequently told not to play pretend gun games, with a district rep saying kids were warned consequences would follow.
Fifth-grader Nathan Entingh, said he was “just playing around”. The rep said Nathan pretended to shoot another student “kind of execution style” in the head. The “victim” didn’t even see the mock execution, but it was spotted by a teacher.
The boy’s father, Paul Entingh, said no one felt threatened, and it’s the adults who are acting childish in their response to a typical 10-year-old’s prank.
“He said he was playing,” Paul Entingh said. “It would even make more sense maybe if he brought a plastic gun that looked like a real gun or something, but it was his finger.”
“Nathan has never been in trouble before at school, and a three-day suspension is overboard”, his father said. “I would have even been fine with them doing an in-school suspension.”
The strict gun-play rules have existed since zero-tolerance policies on guns and drugs swept the nation after the Columbine shootings in the mid-1990s.
