Massachusetts Students Suspended For Holding Airsoft Guns In Picture Taken At HOME.

originally posted by: tavi45
a reply to: OccamsRazor04

Two adults having consensual sex is not a problem. An adult having sex with a child is.

Why is it wrong, he was born that way, it's not a choice. That's like saying being short or black or crippled is wrong. It's something they can't change.

Being gay and being a pedophilia are unrelated. Being straight and being a pedophile are unrelated. Neither being gay or straight harms children

They are all related since all 3 groups are born that way, and you claimed being born a certain way automatically makes it alright.

PM me if you wish to continue this, it has gone too far off topic.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

So if personal experience can't be used then where are all your links to accredited sources? Also this all started with you discussing a personal experience with a school in MA. So personal experience is valuable since you're using it constantly.

As for how asking when you chose to be straight you're answer to why it's a meaningless point was that we aren't talking about you. Actually we are. I've been asking you specifically why gay people are wrong. You've used nothing but your personal opinions and experiences this whole time with no sources.

Also I did address the weak pedophila argument. I'll repeat again though. Pedophiles hurt children. Gay people don't (unless they happen to also be pedophiles but all races and orientations and religions have pedophiles, its a separate issue).

So essentially you refuse to respond to any argument that might prove my point. If I chose to be gay and you chose to be straight why can't you tell me when and why you made the choice?

I assume you'll just deflect, ignore, or avoid answering yet again because it's an indefensible point. You never chose to be straight. You hit puberty and found girls attractive. You never actually decided because sexuality is incredibly complex and not conscious.

Could you choose to be gay right now? Of course not. You aren't into guys. Could I choose to be straight? Of course not. At best I could be bi because maybe I do like women a little. I haven't had a chance to try :p. I doubt I'll be into it though. I did offer to one friend of mine but a gay guy offering sex weirded her out . I'm not against it exactly. Girl parts don't gross me out. I'm just not particularly attracted to ladies.

originally posted by: tavi45
a reply to: OccamsRazor04

So if personal experience can't be used then where are all your links to accredited sources? Also this all started with you discussing a personal experience with a school in MA. So personal experience is valuable since you're using it constantly.

No it's not, I had no personal experience with a school.

As for how asking when you chose to be straight you're answer to why it's a meaningless point was that we aren't talking about you. Actually we are. I've been asking you specifically why gay people are wrong. You've used nothing but your personal opinions and experiences this whole time with no sources.

I have not used any personal experiences, can you show me what experiences I used?

Also I did address the weak pedophila argument. I'll repeat again though. Pedophiles hurt children. Gay people don't (unless they happen to also be pedophiles but all races and orientations and religions have pedophiles, its a separate issue).

Your argument is if you are born a certain way then it can not be bad. Are you now saying that is not true, you can be born a certain way and it can be bad?

So essentially you refuse to respond to any argument that might prove my point. If I chose to be gay and you chose to be straight why can't you tell me when and why you made the choice?

For all you know I am gay. Gay, straight, or any other place on the spectrum, it's not relevant even in the slightest.

I assume you'll just deflect, ignore, or avoid answering yet again because it's an indefensible point. You never chose to be straight. You hit puberty and found girls attractive. You never actually decided because sexuality is incredibly complex and not conscious.

How is it complex when you earlier said it's simple, you are born a certain way. Which is it, complex as I suggest, or simple as you suggest?

Could you choose to be gay right now? Of course not. You aren't into guys. Could I choose to be straight? Of course not. At best I could be bi because maybe I do like women a little. I haven't had a chance to try :p. I doubt I'll be into it though. I did offer to one friend of mine but a gay guy offering sex weirded her out

. I'm not against it exactly. Girl parts don't gross me out. I'm just not particularly attracted to ladies.

Actually there are numerous people who choose to be gay. I have personally known quite a few. This is exactly why argument from personal experience is a logical fallacy. It's the argument that if person X chose it then person A, B, and C also chose it. It's a fallacious argument. It's exactly why my experience is meaningless. You can not take my experience and extrapolate the same is true for everyone else.

Again. PM me if you wish to continue.

a reply to: OccamsRazor04

I did. You haven't responded yet

a reply to: ManFromEuropewell how about the morons drinking beer or jack in pics that post to you tube or fb or smoking reefer should they get suspended if they put homecoming 2014 as their caption too

a reply to: ProfessorChaos
Air guns can produce blood. When I was growing up, having never had proper training in using them safely and responsibly, I did some dumb things. I shot our dog and that's how I found out the pellets are not harmless. The vet had to extract the pellet, as it was embedded in my poor dog. Now imagine if someone got hit in the eye? I felt HORRIBLE at the time. Cried my eyes dry. Making a long story short, I hated guns by the time I entered high school.

Honestly, if I could travel into the past I'd go back and warn my father I wasn't prepared for those guns OR needed someone who could teach me appropriately how to use them. Unfortunately, I think many kids have these guns without proper teaching. My own father, while having served 2 years in the army some 30 years beforehand, did not own a gun and did not have the capacity to teach me.

Obviously, an airsoft gamer has to meet high standards and all of this is accounted for, but if these guns are used irresponsibly then they CAN be dangerous. They LOOK real too.

So what do I think about the picture? Well, I think the school shouldn't have suspended them as long as they did (10 days?). And considering the police forcefully "interrogated" them without parental consent, this situation was possibly tramatic. BUT if I was part of the school staff, I'd like to know WHY there's a pictire of these two kids with airsoft guns with a "Homcoming 2014" caption underneath? In today's environment, with all the school shootings, SOMEONE has to find out what's going on. How to go about doing this, while causing minimal disruption to people who mean no harm?

What freaking thread am I on guys?

I came to check up on the progress of the thread to find the last 2 pages full of jibber jabber. (SP?)

Seriously though...airsoft...high school homecoming...suspension.

I apologize if my original statement used religion, race and sexual preference as an analogy. It wasn't meant to be a literal comparison but to highlight the prejudicial critisism that plagues social media and news.

The hypocrisy in it all is the sheer form of Intolerance that is being propogated by the same people or entities who advocate "tolerance". Screaming choice while legislating freedom.

It's the kind of sh# that makes me want to bang my head into a concrete wall. But yall do carry on...

a reply to: TiedDestructor

I apologize but I like arguing. He started by equating the airsoft gun issue with schools teaching tolerance.

"No .. it was MA. It stemmed from a parent finding out his Elementary School aged child was going to be forced to sit through something at the school telling kids that being gay is a good thing. The parent said that was a moral issue, and the school had no business telling his child what is right and wrong."

He took it to PMs eventually but never really answered why gay people are wrong. I even conceded the argument entirely just to ask him "why are gay people wrong" and I just got ignored.

Once again sorry for interrupting your regularly scheduled programming.

originally posted by: ProfessorChaos

Events like this are a big reason why I'm trying to convince my wife to leave this state. She's already mostly convinced that our son won't be attending public schools, but even with that small victory, I have more work to do to get her to fully recognize the socialist "utopia" this state (Massachusetts) has become.

Are you aware that Massachusetts is one of only 10 states that actually gives more money to the federal government every year in taxes, than they receive back in aid?

It is also the 9th least dependent on the federal government, with 41 states being more dependent.

In terms of which states are receiving the most food stamps? Massachusetts is 35th! i.e., 34 other states have more residents on food stamps than MA. (Meaning only 15 states have less residents receiving aid, putting MA clearly in the bottom third of food stamp spending.)

[s] Yeah... seems pretty "socialist" to me. [/s]

Oh, and this particular "socialist utopia" has some of the lowest poverty rates in the country. (And while we're making all these points-- if liberal policies merely encourage lazy people to go "on the dole" then why is this "fact" not reflected in MA's numbers?)



On the other end of the spectrum, the worst offenders in terms of taking more from the government than they give, are: South Carolina, North Dakota, Florida, Louisiana, Alabama, Hawaii, Mississippi, etc. In other words, primarily "red" states, aka conservative states. In fact, of the 10 worst offenders, Hawaii is pretty much the only clearly blue state.

Here are some of the most recent numbers, if you want to have a look:
wallethub.com...


Dislike Massachusetts' liberal leaning, if you like. But despite being very liberal, and therefore more accepting of "entitlement programs" (as some folks with more ignorance than compassion like to call them) MA gives more than it gets. Including when it's tax time. Funny... if red states take more in aid than they pay in taxes, and blue states pay more in taxes than they take in aid, one might hold the view that it's the blue states, not the red ones, funding these "entitlement programs," no? So what's to complain about? lol But I digress...

Anyway, partisan nonsense aside, regarding the issue that sparked this little rant:

I can pretty much guarantee that the state where this took place had little or nothing to do with what happened. The sad fact is, this is simply part of a trend that has been growing for a long time.

1- We are increasingly paranoid about violence at schools, particularly school shootings. The tragedy of Columbine was horrible enough and complex enough to capture the attention of the nation. And since then, these events have become a frighteningly regular occurance.

2- Schools are increasingly harsh on their students. "Zero Tolerance" is the new policy, for better or worse. And I'm sure this is part of the point OP was trying to make. And I agree, and I dislike it quite a bit, for the most part.

Increased police presence in schools. Students being suspended, expelled, or even arrested and given a criminal record, for the most petty and unreasonable infractions, etc.

But this is happening all across the country! Not just in liberal states!

(As a brief aside: I was quite surprised when I found out that at the school my girlfriend's kids attend, no one is allowed at the school without being on a list --not even to pick up a kid in an emergency, etc-- and all such people must pass a background check in order to make the list. Apparently they do not mess around anymore -AT ALL- when it comes to potential safety issues. The evidence is all around, if you care to look. What we are seeing in OP is merely an extension of that.)

3- Considering the perspective of point number one, point number two starts to make a lot more sense. No one wants their children to be unsafe in school. But the real question here is: Where do we draw the line? How much is enough to keep the kids safe, and what constitutes "going to far?"

I do think the school probably handled this improperly. Step one should have been to talk with the family, and the students, and figure out what was going on. If everything then seemed ok... no further action should have been taken. Looking into a picture of kids holding guns, titled "homecoming," and asking a few questions to discern intent? Perfectly reasonable. Punishing students when it is known that the intent was innocent, and no actual school policies were violated (I assume)? Yeah, this does seem like another case of school admins going too far in the name of Order And Safety.

But the state where it occurred had nothing to do with that.

Schools think that they have control over you child 24-7. A few years ago my nephew was suspended for smoking. I'm not going to get into the right or wrong of smoking here. My nephew was seen smoking by a teacher, who was driving by his house, on a Saturday. At the time my nephew was 18 years old, which is the legal age to purchase cigarettes.

About the same time several students from a nearby school district were suspended for posting Facebook pictures of them drinking beer. They were drinking beer during their summer vacation, in Germany, where they were of legal drinking age and with their parents, who could be seen in the pictures.

All of the suspensions were upheld by their respective school boards.

The school's justification for this is that they have students sign a "Code of Conduct" at the beginning of each year. My nephew's suspension was removed from his record when it was shown that there was no place for his parents to sign and that he was under 18 when he signed it.

His district has since changed their "Code of Conduct" so that a parent has to sign it. They blackmail the parents into signing by stating that without a signature, a student cannot play sports, join a school club, attend a school function or get a parking permit.

Be careful with the parking permit. By signing for that you consent for the car having the permit to be searched any time it is on school property, no matter who's driving it.

Depending on what is in this "Code of Conduct" and how the school interprets it, your child can be suspended for almost anything.

a reply to: beezzer

I saw the picture and soiled myself. (I have to get my chair dry-cleaned now)

It would be easier, faster and cheaper to soil the rest of the room so it matches.

But just look at the sheer EVIL in their expressions. Especially the little girl, I wonder if her Mother's name is Rosemary

a reply to: ProfessorChaos

The school district has no authority to punish these kids for what they do away from school. This kind of reactionary crap needs to cease immediately.

a reply to: tavi45

When my son and daughter could be suspended or even expelled from a school because of a picture that I TOOK and was in immediate supervision of, it's time for a change of scenery.

a reply to: JIMC5499


That is absolute crap. Are you kidding me? I'm seriously at a loss of words, there is so much I could just yell about, lol. Wow, I have a facebook, but it is completely secured, only direct friends can see any pictures I might post.

a reply to: chuck258

You're Facebook is never completely secured. Facebook is all about invading privacy. Everything you put on there is accessible just not by the general public.

If you don't like outside forces affecting your life it might be time to move on from this plane of existence. Dystopia is not far off . TPTB are coming to their end game.

a reply to: chuck258

I'm not kidding. Ever notice how many papers are sent home for parents to sign at the beginning of the school year? How many people actually read those papers? How many just sign them and send them back?