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EEllis wrote:

cb1000rider wrote:Political speech has been ruled on many times within the public school context... I'd like to see the T-shirt too.
I still think this kid just bought himself a tax-payer college scholarship courtesy of some over-zealous educators and law enforcement.

I'm not so sure. Officially he wasn't arrested for the shirt. Heck the cops weren't there for the shirt but rather the disturbance that occurred when the teacher asked/told the kid he couldn't wear it. The Officer comes in and try's to figure out what's going on and the Kid won't stop talking long enough for the Officer to do so. Contempt of cop? Well I guess you could say that but we don't know how many times or what the Officer tried to get the kid to shut up and yes he does need to allow the Officer the ability to do his job. We don't give Cops all that many tools to handle situations like that. It's all very well to say he should of been able to handle a 14yo without arresting him but if you have told the kid to stop, then stop again, then stop or else, well then arresting people is what you do. Would I be happy about this happening , no but that's a far cry from preferring an outcome to being legally or civilly liable because the kid talked himself into a ride.

Sorry, I disagree. If the kid was trying to explain himself to the officer and the officer wasn't willing to listen and told him to shut up, then the kid was within his rights to go ahead and talk. I have personally seen, a couple of times, and many times on You Tube and "Cops" when officers threatened to arrest someone for obstruction when they were doing nothing more than explaining their version of events. "Tell it to the judge." and "Let the judge/jury sort it out." is a popular answer, but doesn't, to me, rise to the level of obstruction, particularly when, say, a teacher is standing there freely giving her version of events without any counter.

"If you won't shut up, I'm taking you to jail." is a pretty poor attitude to me.

philip964 wrote:Someone posted a photo of the young man and his shirt. Sorry I will try and post later.

Common sense would indicate to me this was not what you would wear to school. Unless it was some special day at school where the principal allows relaxed dress rules.

It cannot be "common sense" (getting to be a worn out cliche these days) if it does not make sense, and it does not make sense to allow a teacher to bully a child just because the teacher doesn't like the child or something that the child is wearing, and that's what I see the initial issue as being, everything else was merely an escalation of the wrong done.

philip964 wrote:Freedom of expression does not extend into a school generally. The Supremes have already ruled on this.

The fact that it has been ruled on does not stop the anti-gun nuts from trying to get a new ruling, and it should not stop anyone else that doesn't agree with a ruling, unless the antis and school districts get to play by different rules.

philip964 wrote:This was not to me a case of where a teacher did not like the NRA and used a small gun in a small logo of the NRA to be picky and find a reason to suspend the young man.

And what I see is a teacher tried to bully a child and the school district (wrongly) backed the teacher (after all, a teacher, being an authority figure, is always right, right?).

philip964 wrote:Yes the school handbook apparently did not specifically exclude drawings like this, but to me most schools would object to the shirt I saw.

If the handbook did not explicitly rule out the shirt, then it was within the rules. If the school district doesn't want that shirt worn, then the rules should say so, otherwise it gets worn no matter how badly some bully teacher dislikes it. And I fail to see why "most schools" would object to that shirt, was there something obscene, espousing insurrection or rebellion, or some such? Maybe the schools should have a rule that says no shirts can have anything, words or pictures on them (I have long been of the opinion that there should be a law against adult women wearing shirts that force you to stare at their chests to read them, particularly us dyslexics.)

philip964 wrote:To me, if they gave the young man the opportunity to turn the shirt inside out and he refused, then I have no problem with what happened. I think the young man and/or his father maybe was trying to pick a fight.

The NRA should support fights they will win. To me this is not one of them.

My revised two cents.

In light of his return to school wearing the same shirt, the NRA would easily win this one.