Ariz. school suspends boy for drawing a gun

When I was a school kid I loved to draw fighter jets, battle scenes, guns and tanks and cannons and ships, all kinds of boyish stuff. I was never any good at it, and I had a friend whose astounding talents in that area always reminded me that I’d never amount to much as an artist, but I loved to draw, and battles and airplanes and such comprised a lot of what I drew. No one paid any attention to anything I drew, ever, except maybe to humor me. It didn’t bother anyone and I wasn’t any good, and if I was drawing pictures, well, there were a whole lot worse things I could be getting into if I wasn’t doing that. And by most accounts I turned out ok.

If I was a kid in school and drew any of that stuff now, though, I’m convinced that they would cart me away.

MESA, Arizona — Officials at an Arizona school suspended a 13-year-old boy for sketching what looked like a gun, saying the action posed a threat to his classmates.

The boy’s parents said the drawing was a harmless doodle and school officials overreacted.

“The school made him feel like he committed a crime. They are doing more damage than good,” said the boy’s mother, Paula Mosteller.

Maybe there was a miscommunication. Somebody said “Look, that kid drew a gun!” and someone took “drew” entirely the wrong way. Or, you know, schools just tend to be run by moonbat ninnies these days.

The drawing did not show blood, bullets, injuries or target any human, the parents said. And the East Valley Tribune reported that the boy said he did not intend for the picture to be a threat…

Chandler district spokesman Terry Locke said the crude sketch was “absolutely considered a threat,” and that threatening words or pictures are punishable.

Looks like “moonbat ninnies” is the way to go, because this does not look like it could possibly reasonably be understood as a threat to me. I mean, it looks like the kid even drew a trigger lock on the thing so it couldn’t accidentally go off and shoot some innocent stickman.

Blowback