The End of Discretion, continued
Schoolboy expelled for shooting pellets out of a straw. The relevant law is, of course, a federal one:
The federal Gun-Free Schools Act mandates that schools expel students who take weapons, including hand guns, explosive devices and projectile weapons, to school. E-mail traffic among school officials showed they ruled that Mikel’s plastic tube, which was fashioned from a pen casing, met the definition of a projectile weapon because it was “used to intimidate, threaten or harm others.”
See here, here, and here (in reverse chronological order) for earlier ruminations on this sort of thing.
Isn’t the administrators’ making a decision about what counts as a projectile weapon an act of discretion? Wouldn’t the outcome be fairer and easier to comply with by students if the statute provided a list of weapons?Report
Fair point, but I think these administrative decisions are framed by the definitions in the law we’re talking about.Report
To say it differently, the frame is too wide.Report
On the micro question of “what constitutes a weapon,” maybe so. But the macro question – What should we do with this kid? – is what I’m worried about here.Report
The macro question isn’t as macro as you say it is. The rule mandates expulsion, but there is no reason that the rule can’t mandate suspension, a stern warning or something else. There’s also reason the rule can’t have different penalties for different weapons.
At the very least, this sort of thing is better debated by a legislative body, or at least published in the federal register.
Discretion is the friend of the connected and lucky. It’s the enemy of the disfavored and unlucky.Report
That’s a legitimate concern. This was supposed to be a throwaway post related to some longer, earlier ruminations on the same subject. I tried to address some of the issues you raise here:
https://ordinary-times.com/blog/2011/01/25/rules-are-rules/Report
I’m having trouble finding the relevant parts of the Gun-Free Schools Act. It either explicitly refers to “a firearm that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce” which certainly a pen is not. This seems more in-line, but even that refers to “any type of weapon which will, or which may be readily converted to, expel a projectile by the action of an explosive or other propellant, and which has any barrel with a bore of more than one-half inch in diameter“. Which also seems to exclude a pen (and, really getting into the weeds, the WaPo article shows a photo of the pen that is just less than 1/2 inch).
I’m guessing the act was written this way to ban blow-guns and such, and that’s a classification that really is up to the teacher’s discretion. Presumably if the student was shooting tacks or nails this decision would be justified?Report