Civil Liberties

Toy Gun 911

Fake gun, real suspension

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Aidan Clark and Khalid Caraballo, seventh graders at Larkspur Middle School in Virginia, have been suspended for the remainder of the year because they played with a pellet gun before coming to school. A third student was reportedly also suspended but was not identified in media reports. A neighbor had called 911 on the boys because it made her "uncomfortable" to see them play with a gun, even though she knew it wasn't real.

The school's principal, Matthew Delaney, defended the disciplinary action in a public statement, declaring it his "sincere hope" that the suspended students "will learn important life lessons; the most important being that there will be consequences when they do things that can result in harm to another person." Playing with a pellet gun, he continued, was a "dangerous situation that involved the intervention of law enforcement."