Brickbat: Virtual Panic

Courtney Lancaster says she was surprised to see a police patrol car pull up to her home and an officer come to her door. Despite her misgivings, she allowed the police to search her home, and they went to her 11-year-old son's room. It turns out that during a video lesson a teacher at Maryland's Seneca Elementary School saw a BB gun, which the boy learned to shoot in the Boy Scouts, hanging on the wall of her son's bedroom. The teacher took a screenshot and showed it to the school security officer, who called police. Cops searched the home for about 20 minutes before determining the family had broken no laws. "I felt violated as a parent, for my child, who's standing there with police officers in his room, just to see the fear on his face," she said. Lancaster says the school's principal told her having a gun present in a video lesson is the same thing as bringing one to school. A spokesman for Baltimore County Schools refused to answer questions from the media about the incident.