GUN CORRECTNESS

These PC wackos just love punishing kids. Only the pressure of publicity caused them eventually to back down.

A third-grader at Sun Valley Elementary was suspended this week for bringing a G.I. Joe toy handgun to school. Austin Crittenden, 9, and his family say the school in eastern Birmingham went too far by sending him home for bringing a tiny plastic handgun that accompanied a G.I. Joe action figure. "It's about an inch long," said Vicki Stewart, the boy's grandmother and guardian. "(The principal) had to tape it to a piece of paper to keep from losing it."

The length of the suspension has yet to be determined, said Birmingham City Schools spokeswoman Michaelle Chapman. Possible punishments for a Class III violation such as this one include expulsion and alternative school, she said.

There have been questions recently about whether strict adherence to such codes has gone too far, especially after a Clay-Chalkville teen was sent to an alternative school for violating the school's zero-tolerance policy after being caught taking a Motrin. Last April, two boys at Oak Mountain Middle School received one-day suspensions for playing with toy guns one had brought for a project on Treasure Island. A 10-year-old was arrested in October at an Alabaster school, accused of threatening someone with a toy gun.

It's not just Alabama: Last month, an 8-year-old was suspended from a Spokane, Wash., public school for taking two similar G.I. Joe guns to school.

In cases like this, it's up to the community to let schools know how they feel about the policies, said William Modzeleski, associate deputy undersecretary of the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Safe and Drug Free Schools. But it's the schools' responsibility to use common sense enforcing them, he said. "The punishment has to fit the crime," he said. "On some zero-tolerance policies, the punishment far outweighs the crime."

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