There is also the case of this six year old who brought his swiss army knife with a fork and a spoon in it because he thought it would be cool to eat his lunch with it.
Add that to our 17 year old with the bitty pocket knife in his car.
Did I mention the damned thing was in his car????!!!!
Anyway, I read in one of those stories that the zero-tolerance rules were a response to the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres..
Excuse me?
I'm fairly certain there were rules, not to mention laws -- against bringing guns and bombs to school. Pretty sure of that. If not, there were certainly rules and laws against firing the guns and setting off bombs at school. And if not, surely there were rules against shooting the guns AT people and exploding bombs where people might be in danger of being hurt. And failing all of that, there are laws against assault and murder.
Did any of those things stop it from happening?
How is taking a rule against pocket knives in school going to stop anything bad from happening? If they are willing to do the thing you're trying to prevent them from doing by verbally prohibiting a tool or precursor to that thing ... they're not going to let that additional rule stand in their way.
I always think of the hypothetical robber who wants to rob a store -- so he goes out and gets his conceal & carry permit, jumps through all those hoops -- legally buys a pistol and stashes it in his coat, and then walks up to the door of the convenience store and sees the sign that says "Firearms Prohibited In This Building" ... and he throws up his hands and says "damn!" and leaves.
People are not bound by rules they are willing to break.
(and with that I think I have come up with Things I Know #30)
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