Education

Kindergartener gets detention, forced to apologize for Lego gun the size of a quarter

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Yet another student has landed in a heap of trouble for having something that represents a gun, but isn’t actually anything like a real gun.

This time, the perpetrator was a six-year-old boy. The menacing weapon in question was a plastic Lego gun roughly the size of a quarter, reports WGGB-TV.

The incident unfolded Friday morning on a school bus headed to Old Mill Pond Elementary School in Palmer, Mass. Another student on the bus spotted the Lego piece and promptly shouted to the driver.

Mieke Crane, the mother of the unnamed kindergartener who made the mistake of bringing the miniature weapon on the bus, is not happy.

“I think they overreacted, totally. I totally do,” Crane told WGGB.

“I could see if it was you know, an Airsoft gun or some sort of pistol or live bullets or something, but this is just a toy,” she added. “At six-years-old, I don’t really think he understood the zero-tolerance policy and related it to this as the same.”

School officials, who declined to speak to the ABC affiliate, promptly sent a letter home to all parents explaining the incident. The letter assured parents that there was no real gun, only a small molded piece of plastic from a Danish toy conglomerate.

According to Crane, her son was forced to apologize to the bus driver in a letter. He has to serve detention on Tuesday. Also, he may face a temporary suspension from riding the bus.

Bizarrely, the student who tattled on the boy also had to apologize to the bus driver, WGGB says.

This incident is the latest incident of anti-gun hysteria to erupt in a school setting. There have been many others just this academic year.

An eighth-grader in West Virginia was suspended and, astonishingly, arrested after he refused to remove a t-shirt supporting the National Rifle Association returned to school on Monday. The courageous 14-year-old then returned to school wearing exactly the same shirt, which depicts a hunting rifle with the statement “protect your right.” (RELATED: Eighth-grader arrested over NRA shirt returns to school in same shirt)

Officials at an elementary school in small-town Michigan impounded a third-grader boy’s batch of 30 homemade birthday cupcakes because they were adorned with green plastic figurines representing World War Two soldiers. The school principal branded the military-themed cupcakes “insensitive” in light of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. (RELATED: School confiscates third-grader’s cupcakes topped with toy soldiers)

At Genoa-Kingston Middle School in northeast Illinois, a teacher threatened an eighth-grader with suspension if he did not remove his t-shirt emblazoned with the interlocking rifles insignia of the United States Marines. (RELATED: Junior high teacher tells kid to remove Marines t-shirt or get suspended)

At Park Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, a student was suspended for two days because his teacher thought he shaped a strawberry, pre-baked toaster pastry into something resembling a gun. (RELATED: Second-grader suspended for having breakfast pastry shaped like a gun)

At Poston Butte High School in Arizona, a high school freshman was suspended for setting a picture of a gun as the desktop background on his school-issued computer. (RELATED: Freshman suspended for picture of gun)

At D. Newlin Fell School in Philadelphia, school officials reportedly yelled at a student and then searched her in front of her class after she was found with a paper gun her grandfather had made for her. (RELATED: Paper gun causes panic)

In rural Pennsylvania, a kindergarten girl was suspended after she told another girl that she planned to shoot her with a pink Hello Kitty toy gun that bombards targets with soapy bubbles. (RELATED: Kindergartener suspended for making ‘terroristic threat’ with Hello Kitty bubble gun)

At Roscoe R. Nix Elementary School in Maryland, a six-year-old boy was suspended for making the universal kid sign for a gun, pointing at another student and saying “pow.” That boy’s suspension was later lifted and his name cleared. (RELATED: Pow! You’re suspended, kid)

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