8th Grader Suspended and Arrested After Wearing Gun T-Shirt to School

WOWKTV.com has the report:
When 8th grade Jared Marcum got dressed for school this morning he says he had no idea that his pro-Second Amendment shirt would initiate what he calls a fight over his First Amendment rights. […]
It was the image of a gun printed on Jared's t-shirt that sparked a dispute between a Logan Middle School teacher and Jared, that ended with Jared suspended, arrested and facing two charges, obstruction and disturbing the education process, on his otherwise spotless record. […]
The Logan County School District's dress code policy prohibits clothing that displays profanity, violence, discriminatory messages and more but nowhere in the document does it say anything about gun images.
"He did not violate any school policy," [Jared's father Allen] Lardieri reiterates. "He did not become aggressive."
Video at the link. Via the Twitter feed of Radley Balko.
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Pitching a fit over an NRA shirt? In Appalachian West Virginia? Is the teacher trying to get fired?
Yep - I checked the location before even reading the details. Seems to be all that really matters these days.
If he lived in New York or CA, the student would be screwed.
No one ever needs more than an XXXL T-shirt.
There needs to be a 7 letter limit to prevent high capacity shirts from informing vulnerable students.
"disturbing the education process"
What the fucking fuck? That's a crime?
I would have gotten a life sentence.
And instead you've been imposed as a life sentence on the rest of us.
THANKS A LOT, SUGARFREE!
Oh, you love it.
You are the punishment of God...If we had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like you upon us.
Because calling in the cops and making an ordeal smooths the education process.
Yeah. Seems like the teacher who freaked out about the shirt is more deserving of the charge.
"Everything was going fine until Lee Harvey Oswald, Jr showed up in his Ted Nugent garb...."
This is the kind of bullying that turns kids into mass murderers.
See what I did there?
How dare the little punk interrupt the indoctrination.
I was about to make the same comment. What the fuck does that even mean? Sounds like a catch all fuck you that's why kind of "crime" like "disturbing the peace" that they can combine with their bullshit zero tolerance policies to not only punish, but criminalize any behavior the teacher doesn't like.
I'm hoping this shit causes a backlash and results in a generation of super libertarians, but I doubt it.
No. It's a charge they can hang on you when they got nothin' else. Were it a crime, we'd have to get a whole new crop of teachers as their entire goal is to disturb the education process with their statist claptrap. You know, like having a boy suspended and arrested for exercising his 1A rights that are designed to support his 2A rights.
That's the point you start living naked inside a mobile tent.
That was intend for his sugarfreeness, not for the general riff raff. Is the threading not on?
Oh, I get. That's a fat joke. Because I'm fat. Hilarious. No, really.
After XXXL where do you go but a tent? That's an amazing ammount of canvas to cover one body that isn't being lifted by a heliocopter.
And titty twisters for you for even suggesting I reached Conan O'Brian level banality on fat jokes. That dude has some serious phobias about the fat, and red meat. I prefer the company of both.
facing two charges, obstruction and disturbing the education process
Holy shit. It's amazing how many charges I avoided in high school. Sleeping during class probably would have meant no bail could be posted.
What the fuck? That's a criminal charge? We should save criminal charges for actual crimes, like not doing alt-text.
Also, for the curious: this appears to be in West Virginia.
Yeah, what's up with not identifying the state? There are thousands of counties and I can barely retain the name of my own much less the name of strangulated hill country.
That is one of the more annoying things local news websites do. They assume anyone reading the story is local and knows what state it is. So they don't put the full place name in the stories. So it will say "bumfuck cop charged with assault" and it is not clear at all to an outside reader where Bumfuck is.
Pretty sure Bumfuck is in Egypt, John...
Yeah but I heard it was moving to Nebraska now
I just can't keep up any more
It's like Memphis.
The first bumfuck was founded in Greece.
badoom pish!
CONFORM you little bastard.
"He did not become aggressive."
That's because he's inherently aggressive you cisprivelaged brute.
cisprivelaged
I lol'd. It sounds like something some PC douche nozzle would actually say.
Does it?
Didn't we used to just call that "normal"?
Yes, but that was heteronormative and so had to be abandoned.
It sounds like something some PC douche nozzle would actually say.
Only a cishet beta would say such a thing.
...err, wait, am I mixing up my raving lunatic subcultures?
I wonder if this was his teacher:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobbi_Harlow
This is what happens in a
fashion police state.
+1
YEAAAAAAAAAAH
This is how free speech dies: you get idiots in Academia impressing speech codes on students, who go out and spread speech codes into elementary schools, local governments, business.
It's not unlike guns- sure you have a right to free speech, BUT not in this classroom, or this office or this bus. You want to speechify freely go do it in the woods where no one can be offended.
Now now. Tulpa was just telling me that we can compromise with these people and Toomey was right to do so. These people are fucking fanatics.
Seems like a pretty obvious 1st amendment violation. If students can wear black arm bands, then they sure can wear an NRA shirt.
The picture of the gun makes it problematic, as that may provoke a visceral reaction in other students that an armband of a certain color would not. Free speech rights of minors in schools are subject to the proviso that the speech not be disruptive in nature.
Derp derp derp...picture of a dog/cat/cross/car/house/country/sailboat may provoke a visceral reaction...you are SUCH a moron sometimes pretty much all the time, tulip.
Because god knows we could never allow students to get upset over anything.
Free speech rights of people imprisoned despite not even being accused of a crime are subject to the proviso that the speech not disrupt their imprisonment.
+100
What weak people we've become. What the fuck difference does it make what his shirt says? What if it were a swastika? That's legal anywhere else, right? Why not a school?
And if it might incite something, well, so would the typical insults at that age, which are likely far more provoking than anything found on a shirt.
If someone is wearing a t-shirt that pisses you off in the rest of the world, you can walk away from them. Not so in a public school.
If it were a private school doing this you all would have no problem, I assume. So you recognize that allowing divisive speech is likely to cause problems in a school setting.
Yeah, in a public school you can just deal with it if you don't like my support for the 2nd Amendment.
No, assholes who want to censor other people cause problems.
I'm guessing the teacher's reaction provoked a much greater visceral reaction in the students than the shirt.
I'm pretty sure that talk and/or images of firearms is considered normal conversation in West Virginia.
If this shirt or its message were disruptive it would be because everyone stopped talking about schoolwork and started talking about how they went shooting cans with the old man last week.
This kid learned a priceless lesson about teachers, and authority in general.
Why is the shirt so controversial? Are assault weapons illegal?
Yeah, that's right, they're not.
Smiles smugly
They're illegal inside schools.
There were no weapons inside school, tulip. Therefore your point is moot, and N/A. A picture's not an actual weapon.
Thought you'd probably need to have that clarified, given your MO, IQ and derp quotient.
Ceci n'est pas un pipe.
If he brought a state map to school, he should be charged for trying to jam all of West Virginia into the building.
/Tulpa "logic"
Way to bring the thought of the entire state into this thread, Nutrasweet, thus preventing any other comments from fitting.
*nice work, jerk*
Your relevance beef would appear to be with the person I was responding to, who brought the subject up.
Not really. If the subject of the shirt isn't illegal, why would it be reasonable for someone to be offended? By your logic anything and everything is banned as long as someone uses their hecklers' veto.
Pictures of guns have gotten kids suspended.
I remember one case in Annapolis, MD where a kid drew a picture of his uncle, a US Army Ranger, complete with camo and M-16 and got suspended. Mother complained on TV about the harsh punishment.
Response from the principal: "OK, bitch. You want to dis me on camera? Your crotch spawn can come back next school year. If you do a good job sucking me off, that is."
Tulpa, you're such a humorless dick.
I still believe my friends and I - while cruising in high school - were accused of the ultimate derp infraction: "Bein' loud and boisterous..."
That's seriously what the cop said we were "charged" with. He finally let us go with a stern warning after we asked when they'd be charging everyone in the stands at the football game with the same thing...
One day cops will learn how to climb down from a precarious (and wrong) verbal position without the ubiquitous "stern warning"
What was his punishment for Faith Hilling?
nice
The real crime, of course, is that haircut...
Seriously. Of all the things for Justin Bieber to leave his indelible mark on.
disturbing the education process
So they finally just went ahead and criminalized backsass.
Is this a great country, or what?
It was the image of a gun printed on Jared's t-shirt that sparked a dispute between a Logan Middle School teacher and Jared, that ended with Jared suspended
I wonder if Reason is leaving out relevant details of that "dispute", as they've been wont to do in recent times when pushing an agenda. For example, if the kid told the teacher "fuck off slaver, I don't have to listen to you," it's hard to dispute the grounds for suspension.
And if he did, that justified him being arrested how?
Your trolling is worse than usual this morning.
There's an authority's cock to be sucked. Are you seriously suggesting that it go unsucked, you unserious glib fool?
I am not as hard on Tulpa as you guys are. But wow, he really seems to have forgotten to take his meds this morning or something.
The longer he goes without getting the respect that he DESERVES, the more petulant and stupid he gets. Sooner or later, he'll get elected to the Senate.
How many times does this story have to play out before America does something?
Pretty soon, his blackshirts will be beating up fags and throwing the glib in death camps. THE SIGN OF THE TULIP MEANS ORDER.
Oh, no, wait, my bad. You need to have charisma to lead fascist movements. Or, you know, get that job that your towering intellect DESERVES.
Tulpa will be the toady. He is the midge with the beard who was the Earl's sidekick in The Vikings.
It's actually just Vikings.
/pedantic nerdism
Or, you know, get that job that your towering intellect DESERVES.
So without charisma he'll end up a midling bureaucrat at one of the alphabet soup federal agencies and retire with a nice fat pention courtesy of the US taxpayers. Think about that and try not to fly into a rage.
Everybody knows Charisma is a dump stat for 4e Dwarf Palladerps.
Well someone has to teach the fagots that buttsex is icky.
Yeah, Tulip, cause that's "probably" what the kid did.
Love your "what ifs" - they're always so....retarded.
That's it, buddy. He's working up a ludicrous analogy for you!
There have been several times when I questioned whether there were missing facts in a Reason article and was later proven right. The UC Davis pepper spray incident, the guy who swung a bag full of beer bottles at the cop incident, etc.
And nowhere did I state that "probably" the kid did something else to deserve the suspension, I'm just noting that there may be other facts out there....
Yes, the ever-vigilant tulip, holding REASON to the higher standard it witholds from its readers. Give us one of your analogies, tulip - that always "helps"
Ummm...no. No additional details ever came out in either of those stories that justified your position. You may have deluded yourself that's the case, but it's not.
And BTW shit for brains in the thread where you argued that equality is not a libertarian principle and that therefore laws excluding Jews from public facilities or benefits would not be non-libertarian, you established the new standard by which all arguments involving you will be judged. Since all public education is non-libertarian, there's no comment for you to make on this story AT ALL other than, "Public education is illegitimate, therefore all actions taken by public school administrators are illegitimate, and any police action against persons purported to be disrupting public education are also illegitimate." So please shut the fuck up and go away.
You're not very good at the whole logic thing, are you Fluffy?
Fuck you, cunt.
The new standard is all discussion is cut off at the first element of the story that is non-libertarian.
Public education is non-libertarian.
It's absurd that you're claiming up thread that free speech rights don't exist in public schools when public schools should not exist.
Public schools should not exist. Full stop. Therefore any punishment undertaken by a public school is illegitimate. No one is under any obligation to come up with a way to restrain their speech to accommodate the operational needs of a public school. Fuck 'em, let them fail.
Explain to me how it's libertarian to restrict free speech in public schools. Knock yourself out.
I missed your justification for the UC Davis pepper spray incident. Was it something more than the 'OBEY or be pepper sprayed' warning given? That cop would have received a 'Fuck off, slaver' from me in reply.
The original video was edited to remove the threats by the students against the cops, and the fact that they were moving around to block the cops from transporting arrested individuals to police cars for processing.
"Love your "what ifs" - they're always so....retarded."
BUT...BUT...BUT... HEROIN PARTIES!!!!
/Tulpidity
click through to the article. no mention of any details of the altercation. School board has not replied to the request for comment.
Read the linked article asshole. Reason didn't leave anything out.
Or should I say "You have to read it to know what's in it"
Don't you know about Koch Industries' vast network of local news stations? This is probably one of them.
Their source may have left something out....
Then maybe you should have said that in the first place?
If your source leaves something out, you (obviously) must be leaving the same thing out.
Yeah, every time a source a news outlet uses leaves something out, I hope you'll be there to scold them for not printing something they didn't know about. Man you are beyond parody.
The suspension? Maybe not, depending on his behavior.
His arrest and being charged? Yeah, I'd say that was a little over the top.
How dare a libertarian magazine push an agenda of free speech?
You're really off your rocker on this one. Even if he acted like a shit and deserved to be punished, being arrested on that charge is totally ridiculous, as is the teacher making a big deal out of the shirt at all.
RTFA:
What exactly was Reason leaving out?
Duh, Loki, of course that's what the dude's dad would say. Why would we trust him? Surely, this kid has been a dick to someone somewhere before, and therefore deserves to be arrested. Because being a dick is not a right.
I know, right? I mean, just look at him, with that hippie Beattles meet Justin Bieber haircut, and that smug look on his face with his head all tilted to the side. He was asking for trouble, the little punk.
GET OFF MY LAWN!!!!
Oh, well if the kid's dad who wasn't there says so, it must be true.
I suppose if the anti-gun teacher had said he did become aggressive you'd take that as the unvarnished truth too?
I'm glad we can judge a story by what wasn't said. If only we had your all-seeing powers of omniscience we'd TOTALLY know the dad was wrong and thus wouldnt print his statement. How dare they report what the man said!
"For example, if the kid told the teacher "fuck off slaver, I don't have to listen to you," it's hard to dispute the grounds for suspension."
Well, given that he didn't say "fuck off, slaver" or anything like that and yet still got arrested for wearing a shirt, I'd say saying "fuck off, slaver" would be grounds for an award.
We don't know what he said.
Considering the school hasn't made any such claim, it's a good bet no such thing was said.
How will we know if you've committed a crime if we don't search you?
says he had no idea that his pro-Second Amendment shirt would initiate what he calls a fight over his First Amendment rights.
Silly student- the Constitution does not apply inside a public school building.
what he calls
As long as it's only him calling it a 1A violation.
Is there anything you can't get arrested for? Seem like it would be easier just to tell us what we can do.
Well they would but it is all up to prosecutorial discretion and since the prosecutors and their motivations change from time to time it is impossible to predict in advance what is and isn't illegal
Except we can be sure that once the prosecutor's decided that something's illegal, it is. Cause - authoritah.
"it would be easier just to tell us what we can do."
You can:
1. Shut up
2. Get in line
3. Follow orders
4. Respect my authoritah!
G'dammit Almanian
How did we both think of "authoritah" at the same time? Are you hacking my brain?
Wait, that was an hour apart.
Does anyone really know what time it is?
Does anyone really care (about time)
This happened in West Virginia? I mean, I can see idiocy like this in California, maybe New York... but West Virginia? Cripes, maybe Manchin really does reflect the views of his constituents on guns.
The education schools and credentialing requirements assure that teachers in every corner of the country are uniformly brain dead leftist twits.
Bingo
DC looms large
Just when I start to think WV is turning the corner on liberties, something like this happens.
WV is still highly attached to DC teat, and has a LONG corrupted history with the entanglement of government, Dem party, and unions. Initially the blue collar miners union, but now it's expanded to the teachers union.
The state has had a Dem governor pretty much my entire life. The state congress has been mostly Dem controlled. Our senators are always Dems, and I can't think of any Rep. besides Capito that wasn't a Dem. Sure the votes have been nationally a "red" state, but the "southern" dems have had a stranglehold around here for decades.
Yet this state has shitty education, a shitty business environment, tons of citizens dependent on welfare and the like... yet let's keep electing the same political party over and over.
It seem like WV runs about 30 years behind the rest of the country. It is the last state in the South to have an old South Dixiecrat government.
You have no idea.
I still maintain that most individuals in WV are very liberty oriented, esp with property rights. Some other areas, not so much. When I bring up school choice and/or charter schools, I do get a lot of confused looks.
Yet the same fucking idiots are elected over and over. Somehow I don't think WV is alone in this phenomenon
I think it's the growing urban populations. Remember the congresswoman from Colorado who appeared to not know that magazines can be reloaded? She managed to grow up that ignorant of guns in Wyoming; you wouldn't guess that, but it's entirely possible in the suburbs of Cheyenne and Laramie.
Are you nice and comfy up there on that cross, Tulpa?
I sure hope you're not too cold, wearing nothing but a diaper.
Don't wait for the ACLU to come by and help the kid out.
The truly hilarious part, though, is the shot of the school entrance, with the huge statue of a soldier carrying a rifle. Why didn't the teacher call the cops demanding that be ripped down Saddamm-style?
Actually, since the ACLU has semi-autonomous state chapters, I wouldn't be too surprised (not that I'm holding my breath, either).
I actually work about 5 blocks from the WV ACLU office location.
Might pay them a visit if the weather clears up.
Well, there's always IJ and FIRE.
Why wouldn't the ACLU help him out, considering that this is purely a free speech thing? It's not like they haven't helped out Westboro, the KKK, neo-Nazis and other far less sympathetic characters.
I think the teacher is negligent in not informing the kid that his hair style is straight out of 1974.
Cut him some slack. It is the Beiber look. The chicks dig it.
He could always just get bigger guns.
I for one respect a young man who is willing to go the extra mile to snag a little tail. That shows initiative and a sense of knowing what is important in life.
What if he's just too lazy to get a haircut, as boys his age are wont to do? Do you still respect him them?
Depends. Is his lazziness getting him tail?
Of course, if laziness got you laid, I would spend my life surrounded by willing women.
Hey, that's $10 that can be better spent on something else, don't you think?
Like six bullets to put in his 10rnd mag.
I think working out a bunch is a lot more "going the extra mile" than not getting a haircut.
Well, now that tulip's here to fuck up the whole thread, I'm on to the next. See ya!
The school leadership here is swimming in dumb puddles but the police might have taken the cake with their arrest and charge. Staggering lack of intelligence the whole way round from the school to the asshat fuzz.
How many times does this story have to play out before America does something?
I saw a documentary which featured the story of a school where the principal and school board called in a drug raid on the school. There was security cam footage of cops with dogs terrorizing 15-16 year old kids; screaming, waving their guns around, and letting the dogs snarl right up in the kids' faces during the random warrantless search of lockers and personal effects.
How does something like that happen, and the parents do not rise up and burn down the principal's and school board members' houses with them inside?
We're fucked.
We are totally fucked. And going down and burning the place down is the only thing these petty tyrants will ever understand. They don't give a shit about being sued. It is not their money and they can never be fired. Physical fear is the only thing that would deter them.
Now, John, they would also understand the boot and the truncheon.
Also, I'm pretty sure being dragged out their beds in the middle of the night, tied up and led outside to a tree or lampost with a noose hanging from it would drive the message home too.
I prefer tar, feathers, and a fence rail for that kind of message.
What side will the NRA take? The kid standing up for his rights or the cops enforcing the law? You know, the ones on the books you keep hearing them jaw about.
Just shut up. Without the NRA, you wouldn't be allowed to own a fucking toothpick.
Maybe the NRA will wait for the facts to come out, unlike certain other organizations I could mention.
Yeah, new organizations should NEVER bother to actually comment on what they report. It's so irresponsible not to take into account what hasn't been said. After all, who knows what REALLY happened? Better not to say anything ever, just in case they're wrong about anything. Reason should probably wait a few more days before bothering to say ANYTHING on this story, unlike certain dumbfucks I could mention. /tulpastandard
What side will the NRA take?
This just proves the dire need for more prison guards to protect the children from themselves. If there was an armed guard at the entrance, he could have gunned that deranged free speech nut down.
Congrats to the school system that had the REASON to discern they were a teaching institution, which REASONable people would agree means it's also a learning institution, so their rule you can't promote violence (on a tee or anywhere else), an obviously REASONable one, wshereby without it lives could REASONably be endangered, by any dolt influenced by a depiction of a gun in a learning institution bringing one in or near the school and use it, includes depictions on a tee as much as on a poster, and so ban said depiction by anyone voluntarily wearing such a tee in such an institution. Any REASONable person could see that, excepting the editors of "Reason" and many of its ideological agenda-driven unREASONable readers.
"Reason" the Magazine is to logic what Pravda the newspaper was to truth. And that IS whatchacall "REASON".
Look it's way to early to drink that much for one post.
It's reasonable to think that a depiction of a firearm on a t-shirt promotes violence, and will lead to a kid bringing a real firearm to school to use on his classmates?
Goddamnit, when I went to school, people wore shirts with pictures of hot chicks and pot leaves on them, all the time...where the fuck was this magical property then?
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