This seems unbelievable to me:

A Montana superintendent of schools said his replica black powder muzzleloader accidentally fired off a round while he was showing the weapon to a class.

The superintendent was giving a demonstration with a replica of a Civil War era gun. how on earth do you forget you loaded that sort of thing?

Then there’s this from the story:

The administrator said he dismissed the class after the students calmed down and immediately called the school board and the parents of the students to explain and apologize for the incident.

“None of them were upset with me,” he said of the parents. He said one father laughed until he cried during their phone conversation.

If you call me to tell me that you negligently discharged a firearm in my kid’s class, I’m not going to laugh.

Officials hail math teacher as a hero for preventing ‘a more tragic event’

Good on math teacher David Benke for putting a stop to a guy who ‘has problems.’

Firing over marksmanship program protested: Supporters want former blind training center director reinstated

The program, conducted in a wooded ravine behind the Oakland Drive facility beginning last September, was canceled in November and [Christine] Boone was fired Feb. 4 for allowing firearms on state property.

“It’s a safety-work-rule violation, a serious work-rule violation,” Mario Morrow, director of communications for the Michigan Department of Energy, Labor and Economic Growth, said last week of Boones’ firing.

Big brouhaha over New Dorp boy’s tiny toy gun

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — A 9-year-old New Dorp boy earlier today learned there is no wiggle room in the Department of Education’s “no toy gun” policy — even if the toy gun is just two inches long.

Patrick Timoney, a fourth-grader at PS 52, South Beach, was nearly suspended after playing with LEGOs during his lunch period because one of the action figures was carrying at toy machine gun.

He and his friends had planned a playdate with their respective toys, and were sitting around the cafeteria table when the principal walked in and saw the action figure carrying the fake gun.

While the action figure was a standard LEGO policeman figure, the brand of the gun could not be determined.

The brand of the gun could not be determined? Um, it’s not a gun.

It’s not even one of those life-sized replicas. It is one of those tiny things for Lego action figures. Similar to this:

The principal told the parents that she considered the little piece of plastic suspension-worthy, but a call to a security administrator resulted in only the little piece of plastic being confiscated and given to the boy’s parents.

A message left for Principal Evelyn Matroianni was not returned. However, Margie Feinberg, a spokeswoman for the DOE, said there is a no-tolerance policy when it comes to fake guns because they are considered harmful to the school community.

If someone put this in a movie about public schools it would be dismissed as a fiction. (Hat tip to the reader who sent this in.)

UPDATE: Comment on the NY Firearms board about the uncertainty over the brand of gun:

What about the year of manufacture, lots of potential laws broken here, hard to tell from the pic, but if that thing is not pre-ban, the student is looking at some felonies for sure.

Hilarious.

At first glance this Willows, California, story seems reasonable: Student expelled for having unloaded shotguns in truck

The board voted 4-0 Thursday to expel junior Gary Tudesko after the weapons were discovered via scent-sniffing dogs on Oct. 26.

Zero tolerance means zero tolerance. You bring guns to school, you’re out of here, mister.

But let’s look at that first sentence again:

The Willows Unified School District board of trustees has expelled a 16-year-old for having unloaded shotguns in his pickup parked just off the Willows High School campus.

Not on school property. Busted anyway.

The school’s principal says that since the area is used mostly by students, he considers it part of the school’s jurisdiction. He also says the school is responsible for students while they travel to and from school.

Does school insurance cover students who get into a traffic accident while on their way to school?

Well, probably not that responsible. That would be crazy.

Now, I’m not really defending this kid for leaving a couple of hunting guns in his car on the street while he went to school. That’s not something I probably would have done. But this school is using dogs to search student cars parked off of school property and enforcing school rules based on what they find.

One thing the principal brings up is the 1995 Gun-Free School Zone Act of 1995 which bars possession of firearms withing 1,000 feet of a school. But non-concealable weapons on private property are perfectly legal. The students truck, I believe, qualifies.

For the sake of argument, let’s say we agree with the 1,000 foot limit. What if students commonly park on a street 1,010 feet from the school? Does that vehicle suddenly pop into the school’s jurisdiction, too? There are limits to jurisdictions for a reason. You can’t just decide to expand your coverage.

Student Suspended Over Show-And-Tell Souvenir

Des Moines, Iowa:

Jazmine Martin, 12, brought an empty shotgun shell to school on Monday, a souvenir from a summer vacation to South Dakota. The shell was empty and had the word “blank” written on the front…”This young lady brought a bag of shell casings and shared them with other kids,” said Randy Gordon, Brody Middle School principal.

Gordon said that even though they were empty, the shell casings are considered ammo, which violates the school’s weapon policy.

Martin was suspended and it will go onto her permanent school record.

Michigan’s bill HB 5474 would prohibit colleges and universities from banning concealed weapons. As usual with this sort of proposal, this law would merely allow those who already have concealed pistol licenses to carry as normal.

Here’s a quote from Helmke on the bill:

“We need to do more to make it harder for dangerous people to get dangerous weapons,” said Paul Helmke, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “Michigan should reject this bill, just as all other states have done.”

Helmke apparently didn’t elaborate on how the first part of his quote (about making it harder for dangerous people to get guns) related to the second part of his quote (about guns on campus).

Getting past the predictable input from the Bradys, here’s more on the topic:

The MSU Board of Trustees voted in June to allow those with concealed weapons permits to carry firearms through campus. But concealed weapons are not permitted in dorms, classrooms, arenas or stadiums and this would not change, said state Rep. Jase Bolger, R-Marshall.

“(These) are pistol-free zones and that wouldn’t change at all,” Bolger said. “They are prohibited today, and they would be prohibited tomorrow. Michigan State would not change a thing because of this law, because Michigan State has passed policy that is consistent with state law.”

But some university officials disagree.

MSU Trustee Colleen McNamara said weapon regulation on campus should be determined solely by the university.

“It’s our campus,” McNamara said. “And we have responsibility for the safety of the students and the employees of the university, and our policy on guns should be our policy, not the state’s.”

MSU spokesman Kent Cassella said the university could not speculate on proposed legislation.

The bill is included in a package of bills supported by the Michigan State Police to eliminate inconsistencies in statewide firearm regulation.

“We have a situation right now where the state has said, ‘Our laws are going to be the only laws that are going to (be) applicable on this topic,’” said First Lt. Matt Bolger, legislative liaison for the Michigan State Police.

The State Police backing the bill should give it a better chance.

Here’s some input from a Wayne State University (in Detroit) student:
(more…)

Mistaken identity leads to Montrose High School lockdown over class mock robbery

MONTROSE, Michigan — Montrose High School went into lockdown Thursday after a lunch lady saw a man in a stocking mask lurking outside the school.

The masked man? Montrose Police Chief Darrell Ellis.

It was a planned part of a forensic science class, but the lunch lady spotted them and reported it.

Mississippi State University:

Tuesday morning began just like any other morning for football star Kaleb Eulls.

Eulls and his three younger sisters were among 22 passengers on a school bus bound for Yazoo County High School in western Mississippi until a 14-year old female student boarded the bus armed with a .380 semi-automatic handgun threatening to shoot and ordering the bus driver to pull over.

Eulls got the gunman to focus on him while the rest of the passengers evacuated. When she looked away for a moment he jumped her and took the gun away.

The female assailant was arrested on 22 counts of attempted aggravated assault, 22 counts of kidnapping and one count of possession of a firearm on school property. She was taken to the county juvenile detention facility.

She must have missed the “no guns” signs.

A while back I got this tip in the inbox: All violent video games poised for ban in Germany

A bill is about to be introduced to parliament, after having been rubber-stamped by all sixteen of the country’s interior ministers, that would ban the sale of all violent video games. What’s a violent video game? Any game “where the main part is to realistically play the killing of people or other cruel or unhuman acts of violence against humans or manlike characters.” Yikes.

And not only would the law ban the sale of violent video games there, it would also ban the development of violent video games there.

The bill was the result of reports that a school shooter in March was an avid player of Counter-Strike. (I don’t know the actual status of this legislation, so if someone has more, don’t be shy about letting us know.)

Additionally, more restrictions on where you can store your legally-owned firearms (as in: you can lock them up at the range only) and banning of paintball were part of the bill.