Education

Violent, murderous kid aims gun at… oh wait, it was just his hand

Robby Soave Reporter
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Administrators at Harmony Community School in Osceola County, Florida wasted no time in suspending a student who pointed his finger at another student in a gun-like manner.

Eight-year-old Jordan Bennett was playing cops and robbers with his friends while at school. At one point, he gestured with his finger as if he were holding a gun, and pretended to shoot. This alarmed school officials, who promptly removed the boy from classes for the rest of the day.

The gesture amounted to a threat of violence, according to the school.

Bennett’s mother sees the matter differently.

“He didn’t threaten violence. He didn’t utter words that were inappropriate. He made a sound and used his fingers and that was it,” she said in a statement to local news.

Bennett is back in class, but his mother still believes he was wronged by his school.

Bennett is hardly the first kid whose innocent imagination has earned a serious punishment. The Daily Caller has reported on kids who were disciplined by school officials for playing with fake guns on their own property, for wearing small key chains that looked like a guns and even for merely chewing a pop tart into the shape of a gun. (RELATED: Awful: School expels kids who played with airsoft gun on private property.) (RELATED: Insanity: seventh-grader suspended three days for gun keychain the size of a quarter)

The school district did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but told local news that district policy prohibits students from playing with invisible or otherwise imaginary guns. The Daily Caller found no such clause in the Student Code of Conduct, although “look-alike weapons” are indeed banned. Whether a finger counts as a “look-alike” gun is up for interpretation.

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