US child punished for making pastry gun

This 7-year-old second grader was suspended from a US school for chewing his pastry into a gun shape.

A 7-year-old US pupil has been suspended from his elementary school for nibbling his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun while firearm sales and shootings continue across the country unabated.

Father of the second-grade student filed a formal appeal on Thursday with the superintendent of Anne Arundel County school district near the US capital on Thursday, asking that his child’s school records be wiped clean of the offense, The Washington Post reports Friday.

“The chewed pastry was not capable of harming anybody, even if thrown,” said the appeal, addressed to the superintendent, Kevin Maxwell and Park Elementary School Principal Sandy Blondell. “It could not fire any missile whatsoever.”

The case, which has attracted national attention, came just 11 weeks after the shooting carnage at Sandy Hook Elementary School in the US state of Connecticut, were 20 children and six staff members were killed by a lone gunman armed with an assault rifle.

Sensitivities over the massacre have been variously heightened concerning guns and security, “even imaginary ones,” the report says.

In recent weeks, according to the daily, children have been suspended from school “for pointing their fingers like guns and, in one case, for talking about shooting a Hello Kitty gun that blows bubbles.”

In some cases, it adds, the offenses were described in harsh terms, one as a “terroristic threat,” as school authorities have reportedly agreed, after appeals, to clear students’ permanent records.

In the Anne Arundel school case, the child was suspended March 1 for two days after chewing his breakfast pastry bar and yelling, “Look I made a gun,” according to the appeal. He aimed the pastry at students in a hallway and those at nearby desks, the appeal said.

“It was harmless,” his father said in his appeal. “It was a danish.”

The harsh treatment of school children for their playful activities, which widely reflect what they witness daily on television and news, comes as US adults are widely reported to continue purchasing guns in public gun shows and elsewhere across the country.

Meanwhile, federal officials have so far failed to agree on any national gun-control laws following the Connecticut school massacre.

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