South Carolina Student Arrested For "Killing Pet Dinosaur" 421
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.
Land of insanity (Score:5, Insightful)
Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
a. He's a he.
b. He's a teenager.
c. He goes to a school.
d. He wrote the word "gun" in a "fantasy" story.
Mandatory panic! Alert the police! Search EVERYTHING! Connect the dots!
Personally, I blame the teacher for not sufficiently explaining the limits of the assignment.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Well, of course, the arrow would have bounced off the dino's skin and the dinosaur would have eaten him, end of story!
Yes it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't China.
We have gone to idiotic mode here in the States - beyond plaid.
We have been taken over by the lying bullying pundits - Hannity,Maddow, O'Reilly, Oberman, etc ....
Our media isn't really state controlled as it is corporate controlled - the corporations use the government to solidify their idiocy.
Even my beloved NPR doesn't escape my cynicism when the Koch brothers sponsor it along with many corporate sponsors - regardless of their political leanings.
We are being bombarded by shit.
Shit media.
All of it.
And it has become impossible for us to differentiate the shit from the Truth.
Mix in 110 proof pundits like Hannity and Limbaugh, and we're fucked.
I am trying to cut myself off from media - even the Internet.
It is getting ridiculous.
To paraphrase Thich Nhat Hanh, 'Don't watch the news. If it is really important, you will hear about it.'
I don't mean to stick my head in the sand, but when I cannot get the facts - or I have to sift through countless media outlets to get it - I just have to say, "Fuck it! Let me take care of my neighbor!"
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Re:Yes it is. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's no better decision you can make, IMO, than to walk away from broadcast media, and newspapers, and all those centrally-controlled outlets for news. If you have a deep distrust of blogs, that can work for you. Find a blog or two of interest; look for ones that routinely correct stories when commenters point out flaws, avoid those that instead ban the commenters. As long as you keep your distrust of blogs, that's a good way to keep your head out of the sand.
The only way to learn anything about current events is the combination of a hard-to-censor channel, a willingness to correct mistakes, and your own distrust of everything on that channel.
Re:Yes it is. (Score:4, Insightful)
Where do you think those blogs are getting their info from? Their large collection of reporters circling the globe and getting the real scoop? Or do they just check out the big news sites for 99% of their stories? (Hint: the answer is B). So you have yet another layer of obfuscation and bias in there. Congratulations, your news is even worse.
Hanity runs the government? or points out stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Hannity,Maddow, O'Reilly and Oberman run the government? I thought their job was to point out when the government is screwing up. Matter of fact, if you go to their web sites and look for this story, that's exactly what they're doing.
I'm confused (Score:3)
Are you against arresting kids for writing the word "gun"? I have to wonder because Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh regularly rail against schools' substituting zero-tolerance policies for the use of common sense. The arrest of young Mr. Stone is anything but a reason to rail against Hannity, O'Reilly and Limbaugh.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Letting people write the word "gun" on a piece of paper is very dangerous.
And yes, for those who can't detect satire, this really did happen. We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.
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We should ban pens and paper so it doesn't happen again.
"Oh no! He typed 'pens and paper!' When will they stop?!?"
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly, the pen is mightier than the sword! Will someone think of the children having to witness these horrors!
Google does. Their new e-mail filter might reject statements like the above depending on the word frequencies in spam du jour, because it contains the phrase "pen is".
I wish I were only joking.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:4, Funny)
Writing "gun" on a piece of paper and handing it to the teller might actually be effective - it conveys the threat of force and probably would lead to armed robbery charges.
Does this look like "gub" or "gun"?
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Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
yeah, losing your shit is a sure fire way to demonstrate calm and respectful behavior to a young kid writing about *his* fantasies.
if it was a girl she probably would have been treated differently too
our culture is a culture of fear and cowardice :( plain and simple, when we all realise this collectively (lets hope it doesn't take a collective ass kicking) we'll grow up
Until then, our empire is tiny and shitty compared to the aztecs and mighty vikings that came before it, we will see
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p.s. ps this isn't a testosterone fueled rant, about warrior races, this is coming from someone who is out and proud of who they are and unafraid of their speech still.
we could stand to learn a lot from independent more decentralized cultures from all over the world if they were studied as such, but they are put down as primitive and backwards in history class, while the great white empire of the east india trading company and royal academy of sciences is touted as the greatest achievements of mankind
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we could stand to learn a lot from independent more decentralized cultures from all over the world if they were studied as such, but they are put down as primitive and backwards in history class, while the great white empire of the east india trading company and royal academy of sciences is touted as the greatest achievements of mankind
Yes. I was having this argument with a self-described progressive, who, when faced with me saying, "maybe we don't need to be militarily great, and can learn to live humbly, and trade freely with people without having a huge *@#(ing military" responded with, "But every great nation has to be made that way by having a strong central military" or some such rubbish. It boggled me that someone who nominally claims interest in peace equated greatness with military might. It's downright disturbing.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Through all of history, every place with a remotely hospitable climate was eventually governed by a nation with a strong military. If on government didn't have that, it would be conquered by one that did. There's no evidence that it's even possible to not have a strong central military for a long time (unless you live someplace where the environment is so hostile it's not worth anyone's effort to conquer, but sometimes even then).
Re: Mandatory panic! (Score:4, Insightful)
There's also quite a difference between "strong central military" and "three times the size of any other military force in the world"
Re: Mandatory panic! (Score:4, Insightful)
I think China has a military of this size partly to keep people employed. It's not like they really use it.
But it is only twice as large as any other force in the world...twice the size of the USA, twice the size of India, and North Korea.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Nah, socialists use taxes on your income and property, the communists use guns as they already own all of your property.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:4, Insightful)
Contrary to what many, especially Americans, think, you cannot win a war. The "winners" are simply the last ones standing, whether they have lost arms legs or heads. We still lost the war, like every other participating country.
It's not that I disagree, it's that you are demonstrably wrong.
Which countries redrew borders in the Middle East after World War I? Germany? Guess again. Did Germany voluntarily pay reparations? No.
Which country dominated the world in trade and influence after World War II? Again, not Germany, Italy, Japan, etc. It was the "winner", the U.S.
If you are making the point that even the winners were worse off after the war, I'd have to disagree. The U.S. was booming within a few years. If you argue that the world as a whole was worse off after, for example World War II, tell me, do you think it would have been better to let Germany continue its policy of lebensraum, or two fight the war?
I avoid violence whenever possible, it sickens me. But I cannot deny that it sure solves lots of problems.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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Based on what? The official numbers published by China? China executes so many of it's people that they need custom-built execution vans [wikipedia.org] for logistical convenience. America is a China-wannabe when it comes to human rights violations. We try (Delaware apparently bought 1 execution van in 1986), but we always fall short. Write a story about violence in Tiananmen Square and see what happens.
But that doesn't change the fact that the US has gone absolutely fucking insane about both guns and drugs in schools
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Hey, did you see the Dalai Lama in Tiananmen Square? He was talking about all of the corruption in upper reaches of the Chinese government with some Maoists while he was on his way to the Falun Gong Meeting.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, based on the writeup it sounds like he could be guilty of nothing more than knowing his rights.
He was questioned by police without his parents. That's not acceptable. He shouldn't be punished for anything that arose from an illegal interrogation. He may have simply refused to cooperate.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Informative)
He was questioned by police without his parents. That's not acceptable. He shouldn't be punished for anything that arose from an illegal interrogation. He may have simply refused to cooperate.
I don't know anything about what happened in this particular case, but in general, your assertion about the law is not true. Minors may be questioned by police without parents present. However, what the Supreme Court has said is that police may have to adjust their standard of when to issue a Miranda warning, depending on the subject's age. The normal standard is that Miranda is not required for questioning when a reasonable person in that situation would feel free to leave at any point. However, minors may sometimes assume they must be more obedient to authority figures and therefore may not feel they are free to leave -- thus, in some cases the Miranda standard should be altered to take that into account. Minors may therefore need to be advised of their rights earlier, or offered an opportunity to speak with parents or counsel to help them understand their rights in that situation.
But there's no legal requirement in the U.S. that parents always need to be present for police to talk to a minor or ask him questions. You haven't presented any evidence of an "illegal interrogation."
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Mod parent up! (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
How did "the school" know about this? At most his teacher and the school principal and the regional/district/whatever superintendent should have been aware of the issue.
If anyone was "disturbing" "the school" it would have been one of those three (or the cops) and they should be arrested.
For a student, being "difficult during questioning" should (at most) result in expulsion AND NOT ARREST.
Disturbing (Score:3)
I'd be disturbing too if it was me being harassed by the police for thought crime. If my kid did this I'd tell me he did good to question censorship and police harassment.
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So, you do not find cops questioning and searching 16 years old boy after fictional Facebook post mentioning gunning down dinosaur overreaction?
They questioned and searched him and he became difficult cause they acted like bunch of idiots. Then they arrested him, because you have to totally submit yourself to cops no matter how ridiculous their reason for detaining and searching you. Right?
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He wasn't arrested for writing about shooting the neighbors' dinosaur. He was questioned about it, and then he escalated things from there. The story even says this.
Evidently, your reading comprehension is a bit off. From the article: The cops took Stone in for questioning and searched his locker and backpack for guns. None were found.
Police told My Fox Chicago that Stone was difficult during questioning and they arrested him and charged him with disturbing the school.
How, praytell, did he "disturb the school" while he was "difficult during questioning" AFTER they "took Stone in for questioning" which, by common American syntax, means at the police station?
Re: Mandatory panic! (Score:2)
This story will yield a jurassic response
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Why would that matter?
Does your opinion on the events change depending on his skin color?
Re: Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:5, Insightful)
As to fiction including guns. Oh no! Go arrest EVERY AUTHOR ON THE PLANET!!!
The ones disturbing the school were the police and the idiots that panicked over the short story/assignment. At least one person deserves to be fired.
When I think back to the stories I wrote for class back in high school, morons like the ones at his school would have called out the police, fire department, FBI, NSA, NASA, Marines, Air Force, and MIB!
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The cops just didn't know that dinosaurs were extinct. Now, if he'd written that he killed an honest cop, they'd have known it was fiction.
Re:Mandatory panic! (Score:4, Interesting)
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)
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I'm in America, and when I was in 7th grade I wrote a sci-fi story where all the characters were cooked inside a giant microwave oven disguised as a movie theater.
I got a perfect grade on it.
I'm sure in any large country there are numerous strange school decisions, just based on statistics. Heck, even just in 1 US State there should be enough school decisions being made to find outliers in numerous directions. Certainly at a minimum I would expect both excessive responses to minimally violent expression, an
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Re:Land of insanity (Score:4, Insightful)
If I was a kid today I'd probably be institutionalized.
When I was in 1st grade or so the Vietnam War was on the news all the time and I was just getting into plastic model building. My favorite thing to do was to build Army tanks and helicopters and play war with them. One day at school we had to write a little story and draw a picture with it. I wrote little scenario where a bunch of Army tanks and helicopters were blowing a bridge with a bunch of NVA crossing it (didn't know what a NVA was, they were just the bad guys). The picture had lots of explosions and bodies flying everywhere. It was very colorful and had a lot of detail. I got a good mark for my creativity.
In the afternoon we'd play Army with plastic guns that looked liked the real thing. None of this pink gun shit. We didn't shoot imaginary dinosaurs. We were out hunting Germans and Japanese soldiers. Whoever got stuck being the enemy would at least have fun hamming up his death scene. I guess it wasn't such a big deal back then because I grew up in San Diego and there were more than a few WWII vets that would egg us on.
I don't look forward to seeing what our world will be like when the current crop of kids grow up to be our nation's leaders.
Re:Land of insanity (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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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.
Just making shit up doesn't help your argument any. I can only guess you're talking about the incident where we heard the gunship crew radio that they saw a group of hostiles (true) and a guy with a tube-like device on his shoulder (true) and requested permission to engage. They were given permission to engage. There was no laughing. There was no evidence they knew there was a reporter embedded with the enemy troops. (There's also no such thing as a 50mm gun.)
"good old boys"? If you think that anyone w
LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
Only in 'Murica.
Here' if a 16-year old writes something like that, everyone would have a good laugh.
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
The child understood that dinosaurs don't exist anymore. It's not clear that the police were operating from the same viewpoint [creationmuseum.org].
Re:LOL (Score:5, Funny)
The police were probably just hoping they'd get a chance to shoot a dinosaur themselves.
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It is illegal to hunt extinct animals.
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Everywhere has some stupid crap going on.
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Oh we have our fair share of retarded stuff happening, but punishing teenagers for writing stupid shit clearly ain't it.
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NSPCD, get on that! (Score:2)
Just like Happy days.. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is like watching a train wreck in slow motion. Will it ever stop?
Re:Just like Happy days.. (Score:4, Informative)
You definitely missed the part where they linked to their source article, which was on a Chicago TV station news site.
The rest of your post just sounds like the sort of BS a psych major might spew.
Please, don't tell them ... (Score:4, Insightful)
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... but I strangled my neighbor's unicorn, last night.
Or you could have sodomized that unicorn. That would have been OK as well.
But mention the word "gun" and everybody goes batshiat insane!
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Maybe the gun was a water pistol. Maybe the "killing" was part of a game. It's quite possible this status report was actually true in its own context, not creepy at all, not weird at all. Don't you think asking a few questions might have been the first step, rather than calling in police, mental health people or whoever?
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You are the problem. Stop trying to police everyone. Stop trying to be everyone's insane busybody mom. Mind your own business.
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And there's a new euphemism for the list.
Re:Please, don't tell them ... (Score:5, Funny)
Now, I've heard the phrase choking the chicken before, but that one's a new euphemism to me.
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A unicorn is a bi-sexual person of either gender, generally in the context of a threesome with a couple and where the unicorn has sex with both members of the couple.
So I think he means he gave a hand job to his neighbors bisexual male third wheel. What a bunch of sluts. LOL
Legal in most States. ;)
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This is exactly why I support the banning of hands! Just think of all the crime it would stop! Strangling, Shootings, Stabbing, Stealing... Without hands, you cannot do any of that (easily)!
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I thought this only happened in Florida (Score:5, Insightful)
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Time to build more prisons for youngsters.
What, have Truancy Officers really been slacking that much?
Debbil in de details (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: Debbil in de details (Score:3)
Re:Debbil in de details (Score:5, Insightful)
If you read the details of the story, it becomes quite a bit less sensational.
The details make it worse because not kissing police officers asses resulted in bullshit disturbance charges. (e.g. retaliation)
Not only did the grownups at the school abuse their authority so did the police.
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No. If you read the details of the story, it becomes MORE sensational.
A minor was questioned by the police without his parents present.
Re:Debbil in de details (Score:5, Insightful)
In what way? 16 year old writes two clearly flippant sentences that cannot possibly be true. School officials, apparently too mentally ill to distinguish reality from fantasy, call the cops. Cops, apparently also mentally ill, question the boy as if what he wrote could possibly be a confession. They then arrest him for the perfectly natural outrage he expressed at being subjected to their madness. Then principal Nutty McCuckoo suspends him for a week over the incident that the school instigated.
In what way is that not sensational?
In a just world, the students and their parents will mock and ridicule the principal until he is forced to resign. He brought it upon himself by refusing to be more mature than the kids in his charge.
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When a blog called "the mommy files" interviews mommy and her little darling and describe his behavior as having been "difficult," without giving any account of the police or school version of events, you should probably read that as, "luckily he didn't get charged with assaulting a police officer, because that is what an adult would have gotten."
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Now I'm worried about Holocaust assignments (Score:2)
What else? (Score:2)
He'll probably get jail time if he admits he chokes his chicken too...
Don't Ask if you Don't Want (Score:5, Interesting)
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."
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FTFA (w/emphasis mine): When a South Carolina student was given an assignment by his teacher to create a Facebook-type status report telling something interesting about himself
Huh. Then he was following the rules of the assignment. Facebook statuses are mostly fiction, and some are fantasy.
Probably all too plausible (Score:3, Insightful)
Coming soon... (Score:2)
Jurassic Park banned from video stores for being terrorist propaganda!
Disturbance in the course (Score:2)
Have to love broad laws willfully designed to make everyone guilty.
When the kings dislike you they need to have a "legitimate" excuse to beat you down and lock you away in their dungeons.
I give up (Score:4, Interesting)
He should have... (Score:2)
If he'd said he'd shot Osama bin Laden, they probably would have made him Valedictorian, and nominated him for a medal.
I had to switch my stepson's junior high school (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
The school did the right thing (Score:4, Funny)
Pet dinosaurs are quite rare. In fact I’ve never seen one. So to kill it is a crime against humanity.
At least this kid had enough remorse to need to admit his crime.
I know his message was a cry for help but the school must pursue criminal action as a warning to others who might kill dinosaurs. Thank God we live in a country that takes “If you see something, say something” seriously.
It's all ass covering (Score:3)
God forbid the kid ever does anything violent for the rest of his life. Then, everything he's ever written, said, or done comes under scrutiny. And anyone who ever saw it, and didn't report it to "proper authorities" goes under the bus with him. Gotta over your ass, just in case.
Not-news for these "authorities" - there isn't a teenage boy (or a lot of girls) born that hasn't fantasized violence, against more than an entirely fictional dinosaur, at least once. A lot of them even write it down. But as long as they don't know about it, no one cares.
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Bingo on the ass covering. Everything about this reeks of CYA.
The teacher reads the word "gun", and while they are probably okay with laughing it off and asking the student to take the assignment more seriously, they know that if anything ever comes of it, they'll be fired, so they report it to the department head. The department head knows that "boys will be boys" and that this is just silly, but they have no choice but to pass it up the line if they want to make sure that they aren't the one holding the h
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He had bought a gun to take care of business, but really who brings a gun to a dinosaur fight?
Get real. Everyone knows you need A Gun For Dinosaur [wikipedia.org]. I wonder if de Camp [wikipedia.org] was arrested for this story. Sigh.
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Bonus points for quoting one of my favorite stories.
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Bonus points for quoting one of my favorite stories.
It is a good one. Although, I'd more highly recommend The Gnarly Man [wikipedia.org] if you haven't read it.