Zero Tolerance

Ken Bone Says His Son Was Suspended from School and Questioned by Cops for Gun Range Photo

Parkland survivor and pro-gun activist Kyle Kashuv was also punished.

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Large image on homepages | Screenshot via Ken Bone / Twitter
(Screenshot via Ken Bone / Twitter)

Ken Bone, the nationally beloved undecided voter who asked a question at the second presidential debate in 2016, claims his son was suspended from school and questioned by police after appearing in a photo taken at a gun range.

Bone tweeted the photo, which depicts his son using a weapon appropriately, to Kyle Kashuv on Tuesday. Kashuv, a student-activist and Parkland survivor, is a staunch supporter of gun rights. Kashuv had claimed that police questioned him after he appeared in a gun range photo, and Bone's tweet was supposed to be a message of solidarity. But apparently it landed his son in hot water, too.

In a follow-up tweet, Bone clarified that administrators didn't actually speak with his son; rather, they called the elder Bone at home and informed him of the suspension. The gun range photo was the explicit reason, according to Bone.

Bone's son doesn't have a Twitter account, and it's not publicly known where he attends school, so this news is difficult to verify. But it's easy to believe that school administrators would do such a thing, because the authorities routinely punish students for perfectly benign, constitutionally protected enthusiasm for firearms. Earlier this week, Reason's Declan McCullagh wrote about a Nevada eighth grader who was told he couldn't wear a pro–Second Amendment shirt to school. I've covered cases involving a students who were punished for liking a picture of a gun on Instagram, holding a stick that looked like a gun during recess, and bringing a nerf gun to school. When it comes to guns, all common sense—and all respect for students' civil liberties—goes out the window.

If Bone's son was suspended for no reason other than appearing in a gun range photo, you can add that to the list of ridiculous overreactions.