Gun-shaped barbecue deserves failing grade

Let me start off by saying that I do not begrudge the students their project or the opportunity to learn a trade. That said, I find it to be hypocritical of the Lake Pend Oreille School District for allowing the industrial arts students to build a barbecue shaped like a gun. Before everyone starts calling me a wacko or a liberal or any other name that gets thrown around on these pages, please hear me out. I am not anti-gun, anti-hunting or anti-teenager. I am, however, anti-hypocrisy.

Preschoolers and elementary schoolers are being suspended for bringing a two-inch toy gun replica, that is part of a GI Joe action figure, to school.

School shootings are still happening across the country. The administrators say that they do not want students to be afraid. I can’t think of anyone that would be afraid of a 2-inch plastic gun let alone a large, gun-shaped barbecue.

With a zero tolerance weapons policy in place, how is it that the school administrators allowed a mock weapon to be built in a classroom? If schools are going to be totally asinine on the one extreme, why not the other?

We all realize that a barbecue shaped like a gun can only hurt you if it falls on you or you touch it while it is hot, but, we also know that the two-inch piece of plastic shaped like a gun can’t hurt you either! Again, good job to the students that built it, but a failing grade to the administrators that allowed it!

MARK SNOW

Kootenai