Gun Laws & Legislation

‘Hello Kitty’ bubble gun comment lands 5-year-old in school suspension

Barbara Baird Contributor
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On Jan. 10, a five-year-old girl stood in a bus line with her friends and they discussed the merits of a princess bubble blower compared to a Hello Kitty bubble gun. The little girl extolled the virtues of the Hello Kitty toy, and said, “I’ll shoot you, you shoot me and we’ll all play together.”

According to a report by CNN, the next day, the kindergartner was not only called into the principal’s office at her school in Pennsylvania, she also was suspended for 10 days for a “terrorist threat.” Then, to add insult to injury, the child and her mother had to meet a counselor, who deemed the child to be normal and not violent. The child met with the counselor without her mother, too. The child’s mother does not allow toy guns in the home. The suspension was busted down to two days. Supposedly, the family would like to have the little girl’s record expunged and the school district rescind its suspension.

The report states there was a victim, as well. We can only assume it was the little girl who chose the princess bubble blower.

Oh, for crying out loud. Who is the adult here? In the first place, who reported this incident to the school? A mom with her hair on too tight? And then, for the school administration to take this to such a serious threat level begs the question of why? And furthermore, I would never allow my five-year-old child to meet one-on-one with a therapist, and never in such a ludicrous trumped up situation, as this one appears to be.

The little girl, according to the family’s lawyer, is still upset by this business. And she should be. If I were a parent with a child in the Mt. Carmel School District, I’d be upset, too. I’d be wondering why my child’s principal could not discern an actual threat from this silliness. I’d have a lot of questions for this principal, such as these:

  1. Would someone be able to break the glass and enter the school like Adam Lanza did in Newtown?
  2. What types of alarm systems do you have for intruders in the school?
  3. Do classroom doors have locks on them?
  4. How did you address the mass murder in Newtown with the rest of the school, since obviously you or your staff made mention of this to my child during the course of questioning.

These are the types of questions we need to be asking our school authorities. How exactly are you going to protect our children? And we want answers. Stop spending your time creating problems where they don’t exist.

Barbara Baird is the publisher of Woman’s Outdoor News

Barbara Baird