A hearing was held before the Legislature last week on a bill that would outlaw realistic-looking toy guns on school grounds. If it’s passed, students and others who brought such a non-lethal weapon to the school campus would face a charge of a Class E crime ”“ a misdemeanor.
The legislation was proposed by Sen. Dawn Hill, D-York, in response to concerns raised by Kittery School Resource Officer Rachel Horning, according to press reports. Horning thought the law would help in situations such as the one she encountered, where a student who was a “repeat offender” in school was found to have a replica gun in his vehicle, the Associated Press reported. With the law in place, the student would have been charged and entered the juvenile justice system, which Horning said she thought would have helped him.
We feel this approach is a significant overreach, however, and one that could have serious long-term consequences for youth whose only “crime” is possession of a toy on school grounds.
Certainly, students have no reason to have a gun with them on school grounds, and even if they are headed to a paintball club or out hunting with friends after the last bell, weapons must be banned at school to allow everyone to feel safe.
Given the recent escalation of violence in schools and other public places, any toy that looks similar to a real gun can also put a student in real danger. Many toy guns, such as Airsoft pellet guns, sport bright orange tips on their barrels to help others identify them as non-lethal toys, but others are very hard to differentiate from the real thing, especially from a distance.
School resource officers and other first responders can’t tell a BB gun from an assault rifle in the heat of the moment, and they’re prone to treat it as the latter if they feel threatened or believe other students to be threatened. Brandishing and pointing a gun of any sort in a public, non-gaming setting such as a school is a threatening action that will put a student in danger of being fatally shot, and it should be punished at the criminal level.
Simply having a gun replica on school grounds should not be an equal offense, however, and would put students into the criminal justice system unnecessarily. A great many youth enjoy games that involve pellet guns, BB guns and paintball guns, and may engage in these games after-school with friends. A minor offense such as forgetting an Airsoft pistol in your car or backpack should not rise to the level of criminal action. The student should instead receive a detention or other school-based punishment, along with a talking-to about the seriousness of his or her offense.
Maine does not need an actual law banning replica firearms from school grounds because most schools have a zero-tolerance policy against any weapons, giving school officials the authority to determine what level of disciplinary action is necessary. If a student brings in a replica weapon, that action should be punished under school policy, not automatically as a criminal offense. All this law would do is take the decision out of the school’s hands and raise a child’s foolish misstep into a misdemeanor that will mar their record.
Let the schools enforce their “no weapons” rules without dragging these youth into the criminal justice system. When school resource officers such as Horning, and other administrators, have a student who is repeatedly breaking the rules and is believed to have mental health issues that would cause them to be a threat to others, they should have a process in place to ensure that those students receive the help they need without giving them an unnecessary criminal stigma.
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Today’s editorial was written by Managing Editor Kristen Schulze Muszynski on behalf of the Journal Tribune Editorial Board. Questions? Comments? Contact Kristen by calling 282-1535, ext. 322, or via email at kristenm@journaltribune.com.
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