<Water pistols. Like gum under the seat, it's an American Tradition.
Suspend an eight year old. Then try and fine his parents if he does it when he's nine.

Utterly insane -- but it’s what the morons wanted, so it’s what the morons get.

A busy Mom and Pop with three kids might not be able to STOP their 8 yr. kid from taking a water pistol in his backpack. Kids aren't supposed to have cigarettes or Tylenol in school either, yet they do.
And not all kids who do it are morons. Some may be just a tad more daring.
Lots of them.





Well, the “moron” was directed toward supposed adults (i.e., school boards, the voting public) who insanely determined that a clear plastic squirt gun was far too deadly for their schools. Sharpened pencils (as you note below), as well as innocent rubber bands can be far worse.

Thank goodness the 100-year-reign of the thumbtack has been replaced by the pushpin!

And thanx. I like to think I was rather daring -- but then water pistols were pretty common when I went to school. We even had those pistols that fired tiny yellow disks for gun-tag.

When I was working security (in the previous century), housekeeping told me I had to lose my gun. This one fired little, yellow, soft-plastic pellets a distance of maybe 30-40 feet (I used to shoot the bank tellers at Huntington Center, downtown Columbus). Anyway, housekeeping got tired of sweeping up my bullets. This, I think, should be the primary reason such “firearms” should be banned, not because it just happens to “look like” a gun. Technically, a person sculpting a firearm, regardless of scale, in art class could be expelled.

BTW, I’m also the only one on the 4th floor of WorldCom with a loaded water pistol and a loaded Nerf gun on my shelf.

The inanity of the school rule is that today the water pistol’s similarity to an actual hand-gun ends with the shape. There was a time when manufacturers went to great pains to build them as scaled replicas of the real thing. In certain situations, this was shown to be potentially deadly. Unfortunately, these lifelike, albeit innocuous, weapons can still be purchased.

However, if the educated scholar of today is going to argue the apparently confusing issue that a clear plastic squirt gun could be misconstrued as a deadly weapon, I’d have to say the teacher in question is in dire need of reeducation, not the accused student.

And as for the “indoctrination” angle, what this policy teaches are:
* to rat on each other for infractions against the most inane of rules
* how to conceal weapons for amoral/illegal purposes



I think they should have metal detectors at the high schools...and the wands.
The staff need to be warned who the trouble-makers are, and have the security guards go from there.





Right. Those detectors have been the downfall of the student conceal and carry permit attributed to those deadly clear plastic water pistols (not!).

And as for alerting trouble-makers to security -- why? Why should they be singled out? They’re kids, and if they are rebellious to an extent that includes damage to property not theirs, or to harming other students and teachers, just expel them. Much cheaper than hiring an extensive security force to monitor the spreadsheet of suggested trouble-makers. Also, listing them merely the run-of-the-mill trouble-makers is not very PC the educational system. Every kid is an individual, with special wants and needs. It ain’t easy, but we get what we pay for.

BTW, most trouble-making kids are merely too clever for narrow/close-minded teachers to keep up with. This, of course, falls back to not paying teachers enough, which results in the grown trouble-makers of old not applying as the clever teachers of today (it takes a clever mind to truly capture a clever mind).

So -- how long does it take you to deteriorate on a flight, Lindy?



I don't know what you meant by this.





It was just a clever (i.e., trouble-making) reply to this:
As a woman, I like to travel with nail clippers, a file and tweezers. I have done it for 20 years. Now I am constrained to broken, rough, catchy nails, unruly eyebrows because some 65 year old man can't tell the difference between me and a terrorist.

The flight probably won’t be too awful long, and I’m sure you’ll be able to survive being deprived of your obvious implements of torture and death for such a short time.
;^)

I haven't flown since 911, but I'm headed out on an international flight soon. Hair "chopsticks" are wood, and no more dangerous than a couple of pencils.
Can you carry pencils these days through airports?
How about pens?
Now THERE"S a real problem! Did anyone see the movie where Joe Pechi stabs a guy to death in a bar with a ballpoint PEN?

I suggest calling the port information office for some pointers (not the sharp ones) well before your flight -- like maybe today or tomorrow. The sooner you know, the better prepared you’ll be. And since this is an international flight, I further suggest contacting the distant end port as well.

“We’re not in the 1900’s anymore, Toto.”

So, the lady in question may have protested about her chopsticks, but I see her point.
if it had been me, and they had got me on a day with PMS, who knows....I might have made a scene too. That doesn't make me a moron. But it's another little stress that can add to up to an attitude. Not once did you mention that there should be a review of things that can go along on a flight.

Personally, I think everything should be open to review -- but not on an open concourse with individual security personnel in a heated debate over their interpretation and the traveler’s interpretation of their rules.

There are ways around the problems, such as mailing your suspect accouterments (nail clippers & chop sticks) to either your destination, or back home, or simply packing them in with your freight-luggage.



I can see where you're going with this. Can't you see that some things need changing?





Where I was going was our innate ability to adjust and cope with changing environments. Where you went was to changing the environment even more. Not a problem, as we doubtless will -- which will just be something else we’ll need to eventually adjust to.

Just the way I see it, because freedom costs more than blood,
Dan