They didn’t think that virtual learning would be a lesson in virtual tyranny, but that’s what a Baltimore County, Maryland, mother and son got when police came to their home — all because a teacher saw a BB gun on the fifth-grader’s wall during a class video call.
Now the mother, Navy veteran Courtney Lancaster Sperry, is taking legal action against the offending and “offended” institution, Seneca Elementary School, according to an update on her Facebook page.
Are You Smarter Than a Fifth-grader?
In the case of officials at Seneca Elementary, in Darnestown, the answer may be no — if the events of June 1 are any indication. That was the day Sperry and her 11-year-old son were “targeted by a teacher who saw what she thought was a scary-looking gun hanging on the wall of the boy’s bedroom,” as PJ Media reported.
As Sperry related on Facebook at the time, “While my son was on a zoom call, a ‘concerned parent’ and subsequently two teachers saw his properly stowed and mounted RED RIDER BB GUN and one other BB gun in the background. He was not holding them and never intentionally showed them on video. In fact, he was oblivious that they could even be seen in the background.”
“From the angle in which he was on video, it was not even evident which room of MY HOME he was in,” the mother continued. “So Principal Jason Feiler decided it best to call the police to have my home searched for dangerous weapons.”
Sperry consented to have her home searched, despite the responding officers having no warrant. She said the police were very nice, were “appalled at the call,” and even commended her son on his behavior and firearms knowledge.
But then there’s the school officials’ knowledge, or lack thereof. The principal and the boy’s teacher claimed that “just as he cannot BRING guns to school, he cannot BRING them to virtual meetings as well and this is in the handbook,” Sperry further related on Facebook.
Yet after “a close review of the handbook, it DO[ES] NOT ADDRESS ANYTHING REGARDING VIRTUAL LEARNING!” Sperry stated.
“Not to mention, he did not BRING anything to this meeting and he is in his own home,” she continued. “They were simply in the background in our home, safely stowed in a room behind a closed door, with no ammunition (if you can even call it that).”
Of course, Sperry doesn’t need to explain herself. She had every right to have firearms in her home, and morally sane teachers wouldn’t find this unusual. After all, almost half of Americans polled say they grew up in a household with guns, and 42 percent say one is currently in their home. Moreover, there no doubt are other Americans who own firearms, possibly illegally, who aren’t reflected in such polls.
The school officials’ lack of moral sanity may cost them, too. Sperry stated in an August 20 Facebook update that she has retained a lawyer and then wrote, “I cannot legally share too much, but please know that action is being taken.”
One clue as to a basis for legal action may lie in a warning Sperry issued: Do not allow your children to be on video.
“I found out that screenshots of my MINOR CHILD’S BEDROOM was [sic] taken by BCPS [Baltimore County Public Schools] and BCPS is refusing to provide me with those pictures because it is not ‘part of the student’s record,’” she explains, writing that she never consented to such intrusion.
“‘It’s absolutely scary to think about,’” Sperry told Fox 5 News. “‘Who are on these calls? Who do we have viewing your children and subsequently taking these screenshots that can be sent anywhere or used for any purpose?’”
(With child sex abuse too prevalent in government schools, it’s a good question.)
There’s another good question, one pertaining to paranoiac school policies allegedly forbidding weapons’ “presence” during virtual learning.
“If my son is sitting at the kitchen island next to a butcher block, does that constitute a weapon?” Fox related Sperry as asking. “It’s not allowed at school, right? So, would my home then be searched because he’s sitting next to a butcher block[?]”
Don’t laugh. Leftists in Britain have already instituted “knife control.” We’re moving in that direction, too, if our cultural trajectory is any guide.
Consider: Boys in New York City in the 1940s and ’50s would often carry firearms, openly, on the subways because they participated in school rifle clubs. This was history by the time I attended NYC schools in the ’70s, but even then teachers didn’t bat an eye at the toy guns we children sometimes carried.
Yet now we hear stories about kids being punished for using Nerf guns on school grounds, for drawing a picture of a gun, for shaping fingers as one and saying “Pow!” and even for merely talking about firearms.
In contrast, consider what’s tolerated (when it’s not applauded): “Would the teacher or principal have sicced the cops on Sperry and her son if they had spotted a vibrator, adult movie, or Planned Parenthood flyer in their house?” American Thinker rhetorically asks. “A screen shot of the upcoming Netflix movie Cuties? A copy of Heather Has Two Mommies? A bong or spliff? A brochure from the Church of Satan?”
“Of course not,” the site concludes.
Yet this reflects how this isn’t just about guns; it is, to use a fashionable leftist term, a “systemic” problem. And this is why parents such as Sperry should consider taking a leaf from the Left’s book.
When a teacher or anyone else acts contrary to leftists’ agenda, they don’t settle for an apology; they completely reject the person — and sometimes get him fired.
While this is often driven by hatred, if there is logic behind it, it’s that such a person has done more than commit the one “violation” in question: He has served notice that he’s hostile to your agenda.
Likewise, the problem at Seneca Elementary isn’t that the officials called the cops over a BB gun in someone’s home.
It’s that they were the type of people who would call the cops over a BB gun in someone’s home.
This reflects not just isolated misguidedness, but a toxic, destructive, morally inverted worldview. If teachers would react so irrationally over guns, it’s virtually certain that their teaching — on history, current events, social matters, and everything else — will be infused with the same degree of irrationality. To quote someone (bad grammar and all) most teachers respect, Maya Angelou, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them the first time.”
You wouldn’t, after all, place your kid in the care of a child molester. Should this change because what’s molested isn’t the body, but the mind?
Image: matejmo/iStock/Getty Images Plus
Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.
