Today’s NRA-ILA Grassroots Alert outrage of the week.
This week’s outrage comes to us from Winchendon, Massachusetts where, in yet another case of “zero-tolerance” enforcement defying common sense, fourth-grader Bradley Geslak was suspended from Toy Town Elementary School for bringing a Memorial Day souvenir to school.
According to a May 29, Telegram.com article, a uniformed veteran gave the 10-year-old two empty rifle shell casings from blanks used during the town’s Memorial Day celebration Monday morning. Bradley gave one of the empty casings to his grandfather and kept the other as a souvenir. The trouble began when he took his souvenir to school the next day.
“He was just playing with it at lunch,” explained Crystal Geslak, Bradley’s mother. “He wasn’t showing it to anyone; he had it in his hand and was playing with it.â€
A teacher saw him with the harmless piece of brass and confiscated it. Ms. Geslak was then called at work and told to come and pick up her son, who had been suspended for five days!
Well, the problem is, if you don’t have a license to have a firearm in Massachuetts, you can’t even possess ammunition or ammunition components.  The truth is, this kid and everyone involved in this situation is lucky that it’s only resulting in a five day suspension. Under Massachusetts law, both the kid, the veteran who gave the kid the empty shell casing, and the teacher to took if from the kid could be looking at two years in prison for having ammunition components without a license.
These are the “reasonable restrictions” that the Brady Campaign wants to impose on the rest of the country. And they call us “nuts” and “paranoid” for arguing that these regulations are anything but reasonable.  Yet in this case, the following people could be looking at two years in jail:
- A 10 year old kid.
- One of our nation’s veterans
- An elementary school teacher
Sound reasonable to you? Me neither.
I remember taking a 30-30 casing, which my dad had brought back from a hunting trip, to school when I was about seven or eight. They took it away from me— because I was blowing over the opening to make it whistle…heh. (No suspension, though.)
How times change. Kids today can’t even point their fingers and say, “bang”. We also used to take water guns to school, and that was a pretty serious infraction—but because of the DISRUPTION, not any implied threat. I feel sorry for kids today, and sometimes I’m really glad I don’t have any.
If you follow the argument by Bryan Miller, this kid should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and if we defend him we’re hypocrites.
if you don’t have a license to have a firearm in Massachusetts, you can’t even possess ammunition or ammunition components. The truth is, this kid and everyone involved in this situation is lucky that it’s only resulting in a five day suspension. Under Massachusetts law, both the kid, the veteran who gave the kid the empty shell casing, and the teacher to took if from the kid could be looking at two years in prison for having ammunition components without a license.
You’re effing kidding me…
No, I don’t imagine you are.
And just how many felons (armed robbers, drug dealers, etc.) are actually charged under this law?
I wish I was. Massachusetts law is absolutely insane. And there’s a two year mandatory minimum if you’re ever convicted.
If there was just one sane individual in that school system he or she ought to push to the full extent of Mass. law for conviction and incarceration of the vet and the child. NOT UNTIL “EVERYONE” SEE THE STUPIDITY OF THESER LAWS WILL THE BE STOPPED AND/OR OVERTURNED.
I am afraid that stupidity is not an excuse for the Massachusetts Legislature in this matter. This law was deliberately written to criminalize the unlicensed possession of reloading components. To what end? To make the internet sale or mail order sale of components more difficult (the Attorney General loves to threaten out of state suppliers with hefty civil fines). Why? Ultimately to legislate a complete ban on Citizens rights to Keep and Bear Arms in Massachusetts.
Our freedom is being consumed in a serious of nibbles. Perhaps no one will notice until we are totally consumed and totally powerless.