A 10-year-old Ohio student was suspended for three days last week after he brandished a ‘level 2 lookalike firearm.’ What constitutes a ‘level 2 lookalike firearm,’ you may ask? The student pointed his index finger and thumb like a gun at another student. This ‘violent’ act violated the school’s zero-tolerance gun policy.
“I just want to ask you real quick,” Glenn said on radio this morning. “If I say to you: Somebody in this building has a ‘level two look-alike firearm.’ What do you think that is?”
“I'm thinking it's one of those like my son has, maybe an AR-15-looking… air soft gun,” Pat responded. “[Something that] looks very real.”
“A water pistol, maybe,” Stu added.
While it is unclear how many levels of lookalike firearms exist, Glenn speculated as to why such a harsh term would be used to describe a finger gun.
“Why would they change the name from a finger gun to a level 2 look-alike firearm,” Glenn asked. “It's a finger gun. Stop it! And when your kids come home and they say, ‘Johnny got suspended because he had a class 2 look-alike firearm,’ you get that in and you're like, ‘What the hell is a class 2 look-alike firearm? I'm against that. What the hell is Johnny doing?’”
The school district has refused to back down from its decision to suspend the fifth grader. TheBlaze reports:
Jeff Warner, a spokesman for the district, told the Columbus Dispatch that Devonshire Principal Patricia Price has told students on numerous occasions that they’re not to invoke images of guns when playing and said the students should be aware of the rules.
Warner said warnings have been included in at least three school newsletters sent to parents.
The district spokesman said Nathan put his finger to another students head and pretended to shoot him “execution style.”
“The kids were told, ‘If you don’t stop doing this type of stuff, there would be consequences,’” Warner said. “It’s just been escalating.”
Ultimately, These fancy terms do nothing more than instill fear in a situation that is otherwise harmless.
“You know your hand can't become a firearm, so the description is a lie,” Pat concluded. ”It's just stupid. It's just stupid.”