A zero tolerance policy on tolerance

For those of you who think that those of us in the Northeast are progressive blue-staters who have a firm grasp on the concept of reality ... I submit this:

DENNIS TOWNSHIP, N.J. (AP) ― A hard lesson for a second-grader in Cape May County.
Seven-year-old Kyle Walker was suspended for one day this month because he drew a stick figure shooting a gun. His mother, Shirley McDevitt, says officials at the Dennis Township Primary School told her the drawing violated a zero-tolerance policy for guns.
McDevitt says her son told her the drawing showed a water gun and not a firearm. But school officials won't comment on the matter.

This isn't the first time a New Jersey students has been suspended for depictions of weapons. Four kindergarten boys were suspended in 2000 for playing cops and robbers, even though they were using their fingers as guns.

To be fair, Dennis Township is about as hickville as we get around here, outside of lower Cumberland County, but still.

I know I'm old now, but I remember playing with those little green Army men when I was a kid. It seems stupid, but I used to set them up and move them around. How easily entertained could I be?

I also had a bazooka that fired plastic mortar shells. Two you could load in and another spare one sat on top. It was spring-loaded, and the things went about twenty feet. You'll put an eye out.

I had little plastic guns that all the kids in the neighborhood had, and we'd run around with them playing God knows what and making that stupid ka-pow sound or the one where it sounds like you're spitting. I was a pacifist when I was a kid, and I grew up to be a disgusting pacifist.

The point is, that all this school violence didn't happen because a kid drew a gun or played with plastic Army men. It happened because kids are screwed up. They've always been screwed up, only now it seems like the stuff they use to wreak their havoc is a million times easier to get when we were kids. Everything is.

It seems like a little more of being a kid is taken away from kids every time some anti-social wacko decides to act out. Even if it's 10 a year, the percentage is so low that even if you thought you knew who the oddballs were, chances are they're smart enough to disguise their behavior until they make good on their wishes.

It makes sense to have a zero tolerance policy for guns, but when you start having zero tolerance policies on imagination and expression, you're crossing the line.