Two New Jersey kids were temporarily suspended for sharing their photos of a typical day at the range. (Photo: GunsAmerica.com)
More than 200 parents, gun-rights activists, and student-privacy supporters protested a batch of student suspensions following a normal day at the range. Additionally, both the Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs and New Jersey American Civil Liberties Union raised objections.
After posting photos of their day at a shooting range on Snapchat, two New Jersey students were disciplined and suspended. School authorities flagged their behavior as dangerous because it involved guns even though it was a peaceful, non-threatening activity and post.
Parents and community supporters reacted quickly and demanded that the school administers reverse their suspensions. At first, the administrators defended their actions and kept the boys in in-school suspension.
According to school policy, students are forbidden from possessing any weapons, including simulated weapons, in school. But that policy doesn’t apply to students off campus, on their own time after class.
Thanks to the enormous response to the school’s decision to suspend the boys, school administrators reversed the suspensions after four days of their five-day term. The district and the community are protecting the identities of the affected students.
Parents not only protested the excessively broad reading of school policy, they also objected to the practice of following student activities through social media.
“You guys are reaching into our private life, the private life of our children,” said Lewis Fiordimondo, a Lacey Township parent of a high school student. “It’s not your place. It’s not the school’s place.”
Other parents were more straightforward. “It’s none of your damn business what our children do outside of school,” said Frank Horvath during the parent-administrator board meeting.
“The bottom line is, schools are in charge of kids when they’re in school, and not in charge of kids when they’re not,” said ACLU attorney Alexander Shalom.
“These are top-quality kids,” said gun rights attorney Daniel L. Schmutter. “It’s astonishing what they have done to these kids.”
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Still, some people defended the school’s actions. “In light of what happened in Parkland, Florida, how can anyone say this board did not do its job,” former Lacey school board member Regina Discenza asked. Protesters booed Discenza for her remarks.
Administrators also altered the school policy to clarify that it only applies to students on school property. “Students are forbidden to carry any type of weapon or simulated weapon to school,” reads the new policy. “Strict disciplinary action and legal actions will result if this occurs.”
It’s not clear whether or not administrators will cease following students on social media.
This shows the imbecility of posting anything on Faceborg or Twatter. No posts means no posts.
There goes the school baseball team…
“Students are forbidden to carry any type of weapon or simulated weapon to school,” reads the new policy. “Strict disciplinary action and legal actions will result if this occurs.”
Clubs i.e.. bats have been weapons from the beginning of time.
You do know what’s coming next? Kids that take a Hunters Safety course in their state, because it represents a sport with GUNS! will be targeted, just watch……
“It’s none of your damn business what our children do legally outside of school,” said Frank Horvath during the parent-administrator board meeting.
There Frank, I fixed that for you
The “5 day, in school suspension” was lifted after 4 days…still looks like they were punished to me! In ’76, as a sophomore in HS, I won a Mossberg .22 during a school magazine sale. Any guy with a pick up had a rifle rack in the back glass full of guns, in the school parking lot. If you walked to school and wanted to hunt on your way home, drop your shotgun off at the principal’s office and pick it up that afternoon. Nobody ever got shot. But then, we also had student bus drivers in those days. No bus accidents, no irate parents, unruly kids were reported to the office (or got “thumped” a bit on the bus).
Oh ya, now they’ll follow law-abiding kids doing nothing wrong, but look the other way when someone like this Cruz guy had over 30 reports of dangerous behavior. They’ve lost any credibility if they ever had any.
If a school monitored my social media, they’d see how much I love roasted peanuts, guns, my garden sauna and porn. Not in that order necessarily.
They will reach as far as they can into your life. After all they know what is ‘best’ for you.
Our public school systems employ many people barely capable of anything beyond nose-picking. We need vouchers so every child has the opportunity to get a quality education.
How is suspension a punishment, deterrent, ostracism, etc? All it does is trip the true sociopath’s trigger and delay any actions. What does it solve?
So…it’s a good thing to ostracize kids with guns because you’re worried about what a kid who was bullied for years and treated like a pariah did…smart…real smart…
“In light of what happened in Parkland, Florida, how can anyone say this board did not do its job?”
It’s the job of parents to monitor their children’s social media activities, not the schools. Schools are not, nor were they ever intended to be, parent substitutes. If it was the job of schools to monitor students’ social media use, would they be responsible if they failed to identify an actual threat? Probably not. Government loves to play busybody, but rarely takes responsibility commensurate with its insistence upon intrusion into our lives.
“In light of what happened in Parkland, Florida, how can anyone say this board did not do its job?”Here is the problem, since you don\’t seem to have the common sense to see it for yourself.The school did not \”just\” look into the situation, as well they should have, they did look into it and metered out PUNISHMENT for the kids shooting guns at a gun range.Can you see the wrong here? God help you if your so ignorant that you can\’t see that the school punishing these children is/was WRONG and a serious problem.I think they should maybe have been sued.
The act of the School Administrators following Student’s Social Media Activities is a VIOLATION of the FIRST AMENDMENT AND A VIOLATION OF PRIVACY LAWS UNLESS THE SCHOOL ADMINISTRATORS HAVE APPLIED FOR AND BEEN GRANTED A SEARCH WARRANT BY THE COURT. TIME TO SUE FOR INVASION OF PRIVACY AND A VIOLATION OF FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS.!!
Not at all. The kids posted images on SOCIAL MEDIA. It’s on the internet so there was no invasion of privacy. Also, other news reports indicate the parents of the kids do not wish to sue the school system for their policy. I personally think that shows cowardice but it’s their kids, their decision.
This is what happens when panic rules the day! Rather than look for ways to ensure the safety of children while in school, they have resorted to ostracizing law abiding students because they happen to own and use firearms!
After 9/11, they didn’t resort to ostracizing anyone who happened to own or use a box cutter – no – our politicians concluded that the only way to keep our aircraft safe from hijackers was to install Metal Detectors and Screeners in all of our airports.
Those measures have proven effective since then, and would be just as effective in preventing the inevitable next school shooting, but it isn’t happening – WHY?
There will be another school shooting, and when it happens, the cries for gun control will grow exponentially!
Well the whole problem started when they posted it visit on social media / maybe they should keep something off the internet. A lot of problems are caused by what they post. Personally I don’t have to tell everybody about what I do and don’t do. Sometimes things are better left unadvertised .
Root causes of school administration making this kind of decision:How many of us blow off school board elections because “that stuff doesn’t really matter.”How many of us who DO vote, really don’t know the candidates positions and views?How many of us have EVER been to a school board meeting? They are public, you know, and decisions are made that affect our kids, grandkids, our neighbors’ and friends’ kids. AND OUR COMMUNITIES!And I’m as guilty as the rest of us, and for the past 75 years we have seen but ignored the problems in our education system.The chickens are coming home to roost. There are now so many citizens who support so much of our current insanity, I’m not sure it can be turned around. They support the insanity because they were brought up in corrupt schools teaching bullshit.75 years ago, 50 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, if we had been really alert and willing to get to work, we might have turned it around.
Root causes of school administration making this kind of decision:
How many of us blow off school board elections because “that stuff doesn’t really matter.”
How many of us who DO vote, really don’t know the candidates positions and views?
How many of us have EVER been to a school board meeting? They are public, you know, and decisions are made that affect our kids, grandkids, our neighbors’ and friends’ kids. AND OUR COMMUNITIES!
And I’m as guilty as the rest of us, and for the past 75 years we have seen but ignored the problems in our education system.
The chickens are coming home to roost. There are now so many citizens who support so much of our current insanity, I’m not sure it can be turned around. They support the insanity because they were brought up in corrupt schools teaching bullshit.
75 years ago, 50 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago, if we had been really alert and willing to get to work, we might have turned it around.
Unfortunately we were all working…
I guess the best you can say is that many responsible school districts & administrators have been replaced by a**holes.
My father went to public school in Baltimore City. Not only was he on his high school’s rifle team, but a fellow student on that team later became a judge.
Though I was not on my school’s rifle team, my school had one, and on many an occasion I saw students after school carrying target rifles to the range after regular school hours.
OOPS! NO gun violence, NO gun incidents!
I used to run Hunter Safety classes in 13 of Baltimore County, Md. high schools every year. [NO ammo, just SAFE GUN HANDLING and RESPONSIBILITY.]
I did it FREE, and it was sanctioned and assisted by the Md. Dept. of Natural Resources Police!
After nearly 20 YEARS, a new County school administrator came in and said, “NO guns allowed in schools.”
Please tell me, how can you teach safety, responsibility properly with only pictures?
I taught nearly 5,000 students during that 20 years. To my knowledge, there has not yet been one accidental discharge of a firearm from any of them.
I totally agree with your point. I have taught many hundreds, perhaps not as many as you have, and it is the only way to debunk the illusions from video games and TV/Film. One thing I point out is that there is no “reset” button in real life where you get to start over, the way a video game operates. And if you play around with a firearm and hurt someone, that single act can ruin your life forever. I also point out that I work in the entertainment design area, and I’ve watched many directors say, “I don’t care if it isn’t accurate, it is better drama!” Except in TV and film westerns, where have you ever seen a 6 shot revolver that never needs reloading. Then I give them some homework. I say, “I’m probably the only instructor that will ever ask you to watch TV, but I want you to watch some of the TV Cop shows. Watch the performers when they have their pistol out, even standing around talking to each other. Note which ones have their fingers in the trigger, and which ones do not. The ones with their fingers on the trigger are clueless and are just actors who know nothing about a firearm.” The next class I ask about their homework report. Surprise .. surprise! They say most, but not all do have their finger on the trigger. I then say, “And those that do not have taken a course like this or were former military.
As far as I’m concerned those students who were wrongfully disciplined have hit the lottery jackpot. I would be finding a shyster to guarantee that their college education for the next four years would be paid for by these moronic tyrants posing as “educators”. Hit the leftist bastards where it will hurt the most, their wallets. And collect it from THEM, not from taxpayer funds for the schools!
Well said.
And these idiotic crybabies are the ones teaching our children?
Indoctrinating, not teaching.
A guy named Shalom, who works for the ACLU – in New Jersey, yet – is defending these kids.
Even the ACLU can smell the full diaper of unintended consequences.
There’s hope.
This gives you an idea of the mindset of the people charged with educating our children. They are not teaching our kids how to think, rather what to think. The obscene salaries paid to these administrators needs to be cut off and heads should roll. How dare they tell me or my children what we can do outside of school hours and off school property.
My Church has a Men’s range night twice a year and a lot of men bring their sons to learn and practice. My grandsons have been shooting my .22’s since they were 3-4 years old and have become very good marksmen. SAFETY is always paramount with accuracy right behind.
Fortunately, I live in a FREE state and am not as oppressed as those on the coasts.
Sorry it’s not a “Range Night” – I’m sure you would have many women interested and broaden the anti-anti-gunner platform. Knowledge is power – many gun rights activists have never held a gun much less fired one or even seen a real one. Education is the key to overturning the anti-gun insanity.
I wonder if the school board is suspending students for posting pics of their sexual escapades? Or cross-dressing? Or drinking on Spring break when parents aren’t watching them? Nah, it’s just those damn guns….
Big brother is alive and well
1. School administrators are not empowered to punish purely innocent, off-campus activities of students especially when the students are being supervised by their parents or professionals. So let’s say these kids were off to Summer Camp, and part of that program involves archery and rifle competitions. So you’re going to suspend them for what? Innocent conduct that poses no threat to the school or students there.
2. School administrators are not empowered to punish kids for their parents’ conduct, including innocent conduct. In one instance a female member of the military came by to see her child at school wearing her uniform, which she is required to do when stationed and not on leave. So they disciplined the child and banned the mother. Bad idea? Yes. For a lot of reasons: 1. namely the military is there to protect US. Duh! And 2. Its innocent conduct. We don’t punish innocent conduct in the US. They do that in the third world, and England.
3. I can see schools trawling social media to determine whether or not Johnny or Jane are planning to shoot up a school, at least enough to alert the authorities and to call them out on it and segregate them so long as it has some reasonable connection to the school’s affairs and safety of the students and teachers and staff. So if Johnny and Jane say they want to shoot up a school, yeah its probably a good idea to call them out, and of course report this to the authorities. Social media by definition is what you want the whole world to see, so there are no privacy issues there. A student who posts anything on social media has no reasonable expectation of privacy. But, there is a fine-line. And the line is dangerous vs. innocent conduct.
It seems the school administrators used subjective interpretations to turn innocent conduct into punishable offences.
When we turn innocent conduct into punishable offences, guess what? That is the very definition of tyranny. And this of course involves another analysis: Due Process. When we punish innocent conduct, substantive due process is violated. There is no notice to the student that engaging in lawful, peaceful attendance at a gun club and range is a violation of the rules that will get you kicked out and punished. In fact, the rule doesn’t say that at all. The rule governs conduct on campus, not off campus in a legitimate exercise of a personal right.
So where we start punishing innocent conduct, we engage in tyranny. And you know, this is where the 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th Amendments came from, and later the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments. You know why the founding fathers of the country put those amendments in place? Because it was ASSUMED that the states and the government would never overreach. However, after writing the main body to the Constitution, the drafters spent another 2 years debating how, exactly, to prevent tyranny.
That’s where the 2nd Amendment fits flush with the “We the People” concept. Yes, that’s right we are governed under what is known as a social compact. The government is made of, by and for the People. Not the other way around. It was the private possession of firearms that fueled the rebellion that became the American Revolution; it was the citizen-soldier called into service as Milita, that pushed back even through violence, against a tyrannical colonial king.
Well that is how we have kept our freedoms, our liberties and kept our government in check.
When people stop believing in the Constitution, that is when things are dangerous for everyone. The Constitution is what keeps our society stable and predictable. That is why when you are pressed into public service, or military service, or professional service, you take an oath generally to support the constitution. By believing in it, innocent conduct in theory is not punished.
Better people than I have written volumes on this concept. I’m just regurgitating it.
Now the other kind of Tyranny, if not by king and government, is mob-rule. Mob rule is dangerous. It is unstable. Its based on hyperbole and hysteria.
The school administrators were reacting on hype and hysteria. Not good. So this is tyranny on another level.
Regina Discenza’s comments are a stark indicator of the level of ignorance that exists, not only on that school board but, within the politico of NJ as well as other states. Following her logic, If someone drinks and drives and injures someone we should ban liquor and cars. If someone using a chainsaw injures themselves or someone else, we should ban chainsaws. If a a surgery patient dies due to malpractice of the surgeon, ban scalpels. Come on people, dig your heads out of whatever sand pile or orfice you have it in and deal with the problem rather then being a part of it. The folks who are perpetrating these mass shootings or even terroriist activities, are “protesting” that the world is not living up to their ideal. Ding dongs blaming guns are part of the same idiocy. The issue is self centered belief that “I have the right to expect you to do or be what I want.” If you don’t like guns, don’t own one. If you don’t like liquor, don’t drink it. Don’t blame the inanimate object for the failings of people who think they have the right to expect the world to morph into their idea of what it should be. An idea perpetuated by the same ding dongs who want to ban guns. Talk about hypocrisy.
New gun owner policy for America if you don’t follow or Abide by Christian Angelo-saxon laws and/or rules based on ethics and moral behavior, you can’t own a gun to uphold those law or policies which was recognized when writing U.S. Constitution and judicial laws based on Hebrew 10 Commandments, by the early Christian Protestant, Puritans, Episcopalian and English Baptist settlers.
Leninism/Stalinist Communist agenda, to initiate acts of terror, even by false flag operations, must continue so to turn police against the common citizen, for the purpose for government to have reasonable justification to impose militarized police force with illegal and unconstitutional search and seizure authority upon the peasant of society, purge and sought out the Communist infiltrators and hang them (capital punishment for a capitalist society), for national treason and espionage!!!
What I’m actually seeing is here certain members of that school administration and board who should be evaluated for mental instability issues, such as Paranoid Schizophrenia and or Narcissistic Personality Disorders. I believe that a qualified evaluation by professionals would discover that there are education individuals who should not be allowed to make decisions regarding other people’s children.
And finally I would hope that this suspension was expunged from their records. I would hate to think that these reckless decisions by a unstable individuals could ruin these boys future’s.
Not enough. Just suspending the suspension is not sufficient to stop this abuser of power. He needs to be sued for a very lot of money. You see, even the most vile liberal gun grabber will stop his action when you bankrupt him.
Absurd overreach! I am curious as to what the transgression specifically was – was it that the boys went to the shooting range, that they took pictures of their visit or that they had posted it to their social media? While it is common sense that today schools have to monitor their students’ social media accounts, this sort of peaceable activity should not be punished. Had these two fellows posted pictures of themselves playing Call of Duty or some similar game, running around with virtual firearms and actually shooting up virtual people and interacting via their headsets, gloating over the player they had most recently killed in-game, would they be punished the same way? Why is orderly and safe use of firearms in the real world considered worse?
Cheezuss, everyone knows they should have been home watching porno or playing video games and doing drugs, whats wrong with them?
Liberals are killing America and this is proof of it!
And the funny part is . . . they’re getting away with it and have been since 2008 while the republicans sat on their duffs and didn’t raise one hand to stop the madness.
My friends, the history books in other nations will record this as the beginning of the end of America. I wonder in 200 years which language will be spoken here.
It started long before that. Remember “We’re not gonna fight the culture wars!” from the ’80s, when the Republican Party announced it was going to surrender the entire American cultural scene to the Left and concentrate on pleasing their corporate donors? How’d that work out?
Or you could go back to the ’30s, when the Republican Party of the time decided it couldn’t get traction against Roosevelt’s New Deal by actually opposing it, so they changed their policy to “We’ll give you every bit of the big government goodies the Democrats will, but we’ll do it better!” (a change that persists to the present day: witness the Paul Ryan Budget).
The Managed Surrender has been going on for a long time. It’s just that we’ve begun to notice now.