South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur"

Rambo Tribble (1273454) writes In South Carolina a 16-year old boy, Alex Stone, was arrested and charged with creating a disturbance at his school, as well as suspended, for choosing to write: "I killed my neighbor's pet dinosaur. I bought the gun to take care of the business," in response to a class writing assignment. The story has attracted international attention.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Jane Q. Public]

Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots! Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.

I doubt very much the reaction would have been the same if he'd written that he did it with bow & arrow.

As far as I am concerned, it was the school's actions that were criminal. First, censorship is not the business of schools. Second, they called the police over a non-crime. They didn't even have a reasonable suspicion that any crime had been committed.

It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes this stuff gets outrageous. We had a personal experience with it 3 years ago. In a high school English class our son - 15 at the time - was assigned to write a simple biographical essay. They got to chose the subject and needed to have it approved by the teacher. Our son chose Mikhail Kalashnikov and the teacher approved it. They were then allowed to use class computers to do some research. The teacher freaked out and had our kid taken the to the office and there was a big brouhaha because he was "looking at a web site with guns on it". Really? Really? You don't expect to have some pictures of guns in biographical information about the guy who designed the fracking AK-47 along with several other guns? Argh! If they didn't want guns to be seen on school computers perhaps they should not allow students to select the designers of said guns as their biographical assignment. Yep, out of control loonies running the schools.

Don't Ask if you Don't Want

[The Raven]

This is ludicrous. He should get an A on the assignment... it was completely convincing apparently, despite the inclusion of a pet dinosaur. The school administration and cops were all convinced. The kid should put it on his fucking college resume: "Turned in a story that was so well written I got arrested for the fictitious deed."

Alternately, his college application could be, "I got this excellent ACT score despite being taught in a school that doesn't realize Dinosaurs are extinct."

I give up

[Guru80]

Society is collectively out of their damn minds. Pretty soon sneezing in public will almost certainly be considered a biological weapon attack, because Ebola!!!...arrest and solitary him immediately!

I had to switch my stepson's junior high school

[Anonymous Coward]

He mentioned the word "gun" to a classmate, (he was in army cadets at the time) A teacher overheard him, and apparently this was a banned word at the school. The principal threatened to suspend him if he even mentioned the word "gun" again on school property. We promptly moved him to another school. This was in Canada by the way. Political correctness gone amok. Ironically, my dad used to fire rifles at his school as a part of ROTC training in Nova Scotia. How times have changed.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[ShanghaiBill]

It's one thing to say "no guns in school". It's quite another to ban any mention of them. This isn't China.

Why the China bashing? It is not illegal to write a story about guns in China, and I have never heard of this sort of political knee jerk reaction there. An American is FOUR TIMES as likely to be arrested and imprisoned by their government as a Chinese citizen.

Re:Land of insanity

[easyTree]

Putting aside that these people are retards for thinking he's serious and that they massively overreacted... if you recall, your whole culture (certainly, appears to) celebrate guns, killing etc (certainly movies/tv, film, youth culture). Your armed forces have been at war overseas for hundreds of years. Relatively recently there was video of two good old boys laughing it up whilst shooting news cameramen from an attach helicopter with a 50mm gun. Your own police are now paramilitary organizations quite happy to use armed troop carriers, rubber bullets, tear gas, etc... on civilians.

So, doesn't it seem pretty much like the horse has not only bolted but has evolved into an entirely new life-form and is on a beach somewhere drinking Piña coladas? Hint: yep, it does.

For moderation purposes, troll != you-have-inconveniently-reminded-me-that-I-live-in-a-police-state.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[AK Marc]

If the US were to close the military tomorrow, all standing army, all reserves, all Coast Guard, every gun owned by the feds were destroyed tomorrow (not sold, but destroyed), we'd still have a military force in just the local police enough to repel any threat, including the rest of the world combined invading. China may have a larger military, but has no ability to project that force. Sadly, England would be able to do the most damage, but even then, not able to "invade" or hold anything that wasn't right on the coast under near-constant navy bombardment.

A "realistic" disarmament, leaving national guards, Coast Guards and such in place would be able to repel the rest of the world combined in a world war.

Comparatively, the world has had a large decrease in military force, where world wars were a 20-year occurrence. But those mostly ended after WWII. And yes, lots of wars in the 1800s that weren't world wars were still world wars because Spain, England, and France were battling behind the scenes in lots of "local" skirmishes.

Re:Mandatory panic!

[ganjadude]

when I was in 8th grade i had a smaller than kid hand sized, see thru blue water pistol in the last few weeks of school. the principal brought me in, and the cops were there. I wasnt arrested but i was yelled at by both the cops and principal, because "someone might mistake it for a real gun"

my mom and dad are just laughing at them like are you kidding me?? I ended up getting suspended for a day, my dad took me to the shooting range to show me what a real gun was (and made sure the principal and cops knew, and knew i wasnt in any trouble)