The days of kids playing cops and robbers or cowboys and Indians in the schoolyard may come to an end because of overly zealous “zero tolerance” policies.
Over the past year, schools have increasingly punished children for playing games that involve pretend firearms. Now Florida is leading the nation in stopping this madness.
On Tuesday, the Florida Senate Education Committee unanimously passed a measure that has become known as the “Pop Tart bill.”
The legislation got its nickname from an incident involving Josh Welch, a 7-year-old Maryland boy who was suspended from school in March 2013 for chewing his strawberry Pop Tart into the shape of a gun.
The Florida bill makes it clear that children in public schools will be allowed to simulate firearms while playing without risk of disciplinary action or being referred to the criminal or juvenile justice system.
The Florida House passed the companion bill Thursday by an overwhelming vote of 98-17. Republican Gov. Rick Scott’s spokeswoman Jackie Schutz told me, “The governor supports the Second Amendment and our state’s self-defense law and will review any bill that comes to his desk.”
Marion Hammer, a former president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) and the current head of its Florida lobbying operation said that, “Children should not be punished because some adult lacks common sense or the capacity for rational judgment.”
Ms. Hammer said the NRA supports the legislation because it would “give guidance and relief to school administrators who must walk a fine line between following the law and protecting our children” as well as “stop the abusive result of overreactions of some administrators.”
The House legislation lists the types of games that cannot get a kid into trouble, such as “brandishing a partially consumed pastry or other food item to simulate a firearm or weapon.”
Schoolchildren also will be allowed expressly to use a “finger or hand to simulate a firearm,” draw a picture of a weapon and possess a “toy firearm or weapon made of plastic snap-together building blocks.”
These specifics in the statute seem extreme until you look at the real-life cases in which children have been punished for playing these time-honored games.
Last month, 10-year-old Nathan Entingh was suspended for three days from his Columbus, Ohio, school for pointing his finger like a gun in the classroom.
In January, 6-year-old Rodney Lynch was suspended from his Silver Spring, Md., school for making a shooting gesture with his finger. (His appalled parents later hired an attorney to have the child’s school record cleared.)
Jordan Bennett, an 8-year-old Florida boy, was suspended from school in October for using his finger as a pretend gun while playing cops and robbers. In May, two second-grade boys were suspended from Driver Elementary School in Virginia for pointing pencils at each other while playing soldier.
The Florida bill also makes clear that children will not get into trouble for wearing clothes or accessories with firearms or weapons on them or express opinions about the constitutional right to keep and bear arms.


Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/mar/24/florida-set-pass-pop-tart-gun-bill-protect-kids-pl/?page=1#ixzz2x0f396DK
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NRA wrote: “Children should not be punished because some adult lacks common sense or the capacity for rational judgment.”

 Rotary wrote:
Schools in general are throwing common since out the window. My 5 year old nephew recently got in trouble for dancing in a unfit manor on the playground. He did a "pelvic thrust" and was sent to the office for it. It's sad that we have to govern these things at such a high level to enforce common sense.

 Rotary wrote:
Schools in general are throwing common since out the window. My 5 year old nephew recently got in trouble for dancing in a unfit manor on the playground. He did a "pelvic thrust" and was sent to the office for it. It's sad that we have to govern these things at such a high level to enforce common sense.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Rotary wrote:
Schools in general are throwing common since out the window. My 5 year old nephew recently got in trouble for dancing in a unfit manor on the playground. He did a "pelvic thrust" and was sent to the office for it. It's sad that we have to govern these things at such a high level to enforce common sense.

Your nephew's not related to Kronk is he. That sounds like how it first started with Kronk.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Is "Pop Tarts" really a food?

 Peregrine wrote:
I'm not sure which side I want to laugh at more, the pro-gun zealots who think that being able to make a toy gun out of your food is a sacred right, or the zero-tolerance idiots who can't tell the difference between legitimate problems and obsessive rule worship.

 Ouze wrote:
Why not just, you know, come up with new, less pants on head guidelines instead?

 Peregrine wrote:
I'm not sure which side I want to laugh at more, the pro-gun zealots who think that being able to make a toy gun out of your food is a sacred right, or the zero-tolerance idiots who can't tell the difference between legitimate problems and obsessive rule worship.

NRA wrote:“Children should not be punished because some adult lacks common sense or the capacity for rational judgment.”

 Rotary wrote:
Schools in general are throwing common since out the window. My 5 year old nephew recently got in trouble for dancing in a unfit manor on the playground. He did a "pelvic thrust" and was sent to the office for it. It's sad that we have to govern these things at such a high level to enforce common sense.

 Leigen_Zero wrote:
I just wish you could get more than 2 flavours of poptarts in the UK

Seriously, we can only get chocolate or strawberry in the supermarkets

 Grey Templar wrote:
But has any parent ever complained and threatened to sue because they didn't like the kids playing cops and robbers on the playground?

I mean without immediately getting laughed out of the office