Rep. Steve Stockman (R-Tex.) has introduced legislation that would cut off funding to schools whose zero tolerance policies lead them to punish children for brandishing pastries in the manner of a gun, for making gun-fingers and saying "bang" (or similar), for pointing pretend guns that are smaller than 2" in length, drawing a picture of a gun, making a gun out of legos or pencils or whatnot, or wearing a t-shirt "that supports Second Amendment rights."
As the general subject matter and especially item #6 might suggest, in addition to being concerned about sanity in the schoolroom Rep. Stockman is a strong supporter of gun rights. In fact, of the 11 bills he has introduced since he became a Congressman, seven of them have something to do with the latter issue.
That includes the "Save Endangered Species Act of 2013," which despite its name would require an exception to the actual Endangered Species Act so that three endangered species could be hunted. The argument is that these species are only endangered overseas and are "flourishing" in Texas; fine, but the name is still pretty remarkable.
Anyway, nothing wrong with supporting gun rights, in my view, but personally I think it's enough to wear the Team Sanity t-shirt to this rally. I've already written about (among others) the pastry-gun and Lego-gun (or "plastic-snap-together-building-blocks-gun") incidents; the pastry-gun incident was dumb enough to get three posts. Cutting off federal funds might be a bit of an overreaction in the other direction, but again: somebody please do something.
Bill Would Protect Students' Right to Carry Pastry Guns
(Image: Pop Tart Guns, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from numidas's photostream)
