A SOLDIER'S PERSPECTIVE
THE WEB'S LEADING MILITARY BLOG SINCE 2004
As a proud NRA member, I frequently get little news alerts about the stupid stuff done in this country to violate our civil and constitutional rights. This one gets my gander up and a message has already been left at the number below.
According to a May 29, Telegram.com article, a uniformed veteran gave the 10-year-old two empty rifle shell casings from blanks used during the town’s Memorial Day celebration Monday morning. Bradley gave one of the empty casings to his grandfather and kept the other as a souvenir. The trouble began when he took his souvenir to school the next day.
“He was just playing with it at lunch,†explained Crystal Geslak, Bradley’s mother. “He wasn’t showing it to anyone; he had it in his hand and was playing with it.â€
A teacher saw him with the harmless piece of brass and confiscated it. Ms. Geslak was then called at work and told to come and pick up her son, who had been suspended for five days!
Ms. Geslak arrived at the school to find her son in tears. “I was totally shocked. I couldn’t believe this was happening,†she said. “It was just an empty shell, not even from a real bullet. A sharpened pencil would be more dangerous than this piece of metal.â€
“He was so proud to have been given them. His dad’s a veteran, his uncle’s a veteran, both his grandfathers are veterans. Memorial Day is a big thing to us. It’s a very important holiday and we have a big celebration every year,†Ms. Geslak said.
Ms. Geslak, who will be forced to miss work in order to stay home with her son, says she is worried about what having a “weapon-related suspension†on his school record will mean to his future.
To add insult to injury, the family says a school official told them that the shell would not be returned, and that the next step might involve assigning a probation officer to Bradley! Yes, you read that right, a probation officer.
A young boy punished over a harmless souvenir. By any standard, that’s outrageous.
If you’d like to express your concern over this incident, please visit http://www.winchendon.mec.edu/. To leave a voice message for Brooke Clenchy, Superintendent of Schools, please call 978-297-0031.
(17) Readers Comments
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It’s stuff like this that makes me afraid of where our country is headed. I do hope that he’s able to get another souvenir and the message that this is sending to our young people is What?
Miss Ladybug
“Zero tolerance” = “zero intelligence”
This is ridiculous. If I had been his teacher, I likely would have just told him to put it away and take it home.
White Rose
The things people do now days! If it had been a live shell, that would have been one thing, but an empty casing! Another show of stupidity!
Miss Ladybug
Even if it had been a live shell, I can’t really see that it would be a real danger without being inside of a weapon which could be fired. Maybe I just don’t know enough about firearms and ammunition…
Donna
What an injustice to this little boy. What in the world are these people thinking?! He didn’t have a weapon on campus, that would really call for a suspension. I do hope his parents can get the suspension lifted and it won’t go on his record.
It seems people are taking everything to extremes these days.
Tony
Miss ladybug has it right, zero tolerance equals zero intelligence. The teacher missed a great opportunity to use the shell casing to provide a short history/civics lesson on the true meaning of Memorial Day, what it cost those that have fallen and how it is used to honor those that have defended the freedoms that we enjoy. Of course with zero intelligence, the teacher obviously wouldn’t have been able to address those items.
Linda
I can’t believe that some people are so brainless and don’t understand a boys need for something that represents his dad and other very special people that protect us everyday. I hope they don’t hold this against the boy. GOD BLESS AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!
Chrissie
Considering the fact that he is a young boy (and boys will be boys!) he more than likely was showing it off to his friends and drawing attention to his cool souvenir.
This alone, however, does not warrant this child being suspended and the school causing such a big brouhaha about it. A more intelligent, progressive approach would have been having the child sit down with a guidance counsellor and discuss gun safety.
Perhaps even having a school assembly about gun safety would have been appropriate.
They wanted to make a point – that violence, in any form, is not allowed on school campus – but all they did was ostracize a young child and make themselves look like a bunch of assholes. These people need to open a dictionary and memorize the definition of “tact”!
SSgtJ
Note the phrase “empty rifle shell casings”. As most of you already know, we are talking about something that is less dangerous then the pencil the teacher used to write the kid up. If anyone should go to a gun safety course, it would be the teacher that has no clue. We are talking about an empty casing with no primer, gunpowder or projectile. Just a little hollow piece of brass like a small whistle. Totally harmless.
Chrissie
That I understand, SSgtJ. It’s a casing that is harmless – the issue is what it represents, I’m guessing. I mentioned the gun safety crash course as the most extreme thing they should have done, not suspension. I personally do not think the child did anything wrong, at least not wrong enough to deserve all of this nonsense.
SSgtJ
Chrissie, in this article, the child did not demostrate a need for a gun safety course. Even if he were showing it to his friends, gun safety was not an issue. There were no guns, there was not ammo, there were no safety issues. In fact, the child was operating within safety parameters. He had a totally safe object. If the teacher didn’t understand that, then the TEACHER should go to a gun safety course. As far as what the empty round represents … exactly what is that?
Chrissie
It represents a gun, as it is part of the ammunition for a gun. I am not saying that there was any possibility of physical danger with bringing the case of school – an empty case can’t really do much of anything, can it? The fact of the matter is that the school wanted to make an example of this child’s actions – the point being “guns = bad”. Whether you or I believe in that point doesn’t matter – it is what the school thought and I was offering an alternative to suspension, which was gun safety. Do I think the child needs a gun safety course? No. Do I think the whole school needs a gun safety course? No. But it could have been an alternative instead of humiliating this child and his family. Do you see what I am trying to say, SSgtJ?
SSgtJ
Thank you Chrissie, for explaining your point.
CJ
Chrissie, the problem is that there is nothing wrong with a gun. Even if it did represent a gun, what’s the issue? There would be less crime if there were more guns. Guns don’t equal bad. Bad people = bad. It is not up to the schools to educate our children that guns are good or bad. They are inanimate objects that do nothing without a human wielding them. Our schools should be teaching gun SAFETY if they’re going to teach anything about guns. Guns keep our government honest and they keep our neighbors honest.
Chrissie
Like I said before, it has nothing to do with whether any of us here believe guns are a good thing or a bad thing. It was the stance of the school that guns are a bad thing. It was the school who decided to make a huge fiasco out of this child’s act. I think that the school could have made a more tactical, intelligent example of this occurance then how they did. Whether that’s a gun safety or something else… but not humiliating this little boy and his family.
CJ
Okay, I see your point Chrissie. Thanks for hanging in there for me.
ben
wow. just wow.i once brought a bullet shell to school. no one cared. like, jeez, its empty atleast. really. the schools sporks are even more dangerous than that. and it was probably an m4 shell. if they thought he would swallow the shell, chances are, it wouldnt fit in a 4th graders mouth. these people are just plain hypocrytes.