NRA-ILA GRASSROOTS ALERT: Vol. 20, No. 24 06/14/2013

When "Zero-Tolerance" Makes "Zero-Sense"

We've been reporting very regularly on ridiculous cases involving over-zealous school officials misinterpreting and wrongly enforcing "zero-tolerance" rules.

In March, we reported on an outrageous case of a seven-year-old Baltimore, Md. student who, according to a March 2, Daily Caller article, was suspended for two days for the nefarious act of shaping a breakfast pastry into what his teacher thought looked like a gun. Yes, a breakfast pastry.

According to the young student, he was eating the strawberry pastry during snack time and was biting off pieces in an attempt to shape it into a mountain. Apparently, the teacher thought the student's handiwork instead looked like a gun, and escorted him to the principal's office for prompt disciplinary action.

In a recent follow-up story, the Daily Caller reported on more bad news for the young victim of over-zealous school administrators.

According to the article, this week, a lawyer for the family received a letter from school administrators who officially denied an appeal to have the suspension expunged from the second-grader's permanent record, thus ensuring an equally permanent blot on the child's record. How unreasonable and unnecessary can you get?

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Tell Manchin to Stand with West Virginia

Fact-Finding Takes Siesta in New Pro-Control "Study"

This week, we stumbled upon The Way of the Gun: Estimating Firearms Traffic Across the U.S.-Mexico Border, one of the strangest and most half-asked gun control-related "studies" to come down the sendero in a long time. It contends that a quarter of a million firearms are smuggled from the U.S. to Mexico annually--a figure far in excess of estimates offered by the BATFE, the GAO, and Mexican law enforcement officials--and that 47 percent of firearm dealers in the U.S. would go out of business if they were unable to sell guns intended to be smuggled across the border. And, it proposes several actions for our federal or state governments to take, without explaining why.

First, the study--and in this instance we're using the term as loosely as the English language will allow--says that laws on our side of the border should require public disclosure of local gun purchase statistics. But in any jurisdiction, all or almost all firearms purchased have nothing to do with smuggling or Mexico. If you're looking for a needle in a haystack, why add hay? Furthermore, most firearm-related murders in Mexico are committed with handguns and, though the handguns used in such murders do not necessarily originate in the U.S., FFLs are already required to notify the BATFE whenever a customer acquires more than one handgun within a 5-day period.

Manchin Should Stand with the Second Amendment and with Those Who Put Him in Office

In April, the Senate voted on, and rejected, the Obama Administration's gun control agenda. The administration was attempting to ban an ever-lengthening list of semi-automatic firearms, magazines that hold more than 10 rounds, and to expand background check requirements to require government permission for many transfers of firearms among private citizens.

The underlying bill Obama wanted to see pass was S. 649, by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.), the "universal background checks" provisions of which came from Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). Because Schumer's legislation was too severe to have any chance of passage, Senators Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) and Pat Toomey (R-Pa.), along with Schumer, proposed a compromise amendment in the hope of winning additional votes. However, the amendment was riddled with pitfalls for gun owners, and even some potentially pro-gun provisions added to sweeten the pot were flawed. The amendment fell four votes short of the 60 that were required for passage under a rule the Senate adopted to avoid a filibuster. (Click here to see how your senators voted.)