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CHARLESTON, W.Va. A criminal charge has been dismissed against a West Virginia middle school student who refused a teacher's order to remove a National Rifle Association T-shirt he wore to school. Logan County Circuit Judge Eric O'Briant signed an order dismissing an obstruction charge Thursday against 14-year-old Jared Marcum stemming from an April 18 incident at Logan Middle School. Marcum was charged after a police officer told him to stop talking, but the studen

The case of Jared Marcum, the Logan County teen suspended from school, arrested and charged with obstructing an officer after refusing to change out of his NRA T-shirt at school, has taken another turn. Marcum was back at the Logan County Courthouse June 24, two weeks before he was scheduled to appear. The reason? An emergency gag order hearing requested by prosecutors Christopher White and Sabrina Deskins. "We were here because the prosecution filed a motion for a gag order," said Ben White, Marcum's attorney. "My opinion is because, seemingly, they want to take it out of the court of...

We first brought you coverage of this story back in April, and as shocking as it was, I’d assumed we’d pretty much heard the end of it. In case you missed it, here’s the short recap: When 8th grade Jared Marcum got dressed for school on Thursday he says he had no idea that his pro-Second Amendment shirt would initiate what he calls a fight over his First Amendment rights. It was the image of a gun printed on Jared’s t-shirt that sparked a dispute between a Logan Middle School teacher and Jared, that ended with Jared suspended, arrested and...

The West Virginia eighth-grader who was suspended and arrested in late April after he refused to remove a t-shirt supporting the National Rifle Association appeared in court this week and was formally charged with obstructing an officer. As CBS affiliate WTRF reports, 14-year-old Jared Marcum now faces a $500 fine and a maximum of one year in prison. The boy’s father, Allen Lardieri, is not pleased. “Me, I’m more of a fighter and so is Jared and eventually we’re going to get through this,” Lardieri told WTRF. “I don’t think it should have ever gotten this far.” “Every aspect of...

Finally! We have common sense in our public schools, at least in one Virginia school district anyway. After two boy were suspended for “using pencils like guns“, the Suffolk School Board decided to review their current weapons policy, which was a very strict zero tolerance policy which left no room for interpretation. According to 10News.com, Under the revised policy, school administrators can look at factors such as intentions of harm and whether the object is listed as a weapon to determine the punishment. Ordinary objects will not be considered weapons A local television station reports that school board members voted...

Perhaps a suddenly firearm-friendly President Obama can put in a good word for Jared Marcum. In April, Marcum, an eighth-grader at Logan Middle School in Logan, W. Va., was arrested when he refused to take off his NRA t-shirt. The New York Daily News reports: The clothing kerfuffle began when Marcum wore a shirt bearing the NRA’s logo and a hunting rifle. As he stood in line in the cafeteria, a teacher ordered him to either change shirts or turn it inside out.Marcum declined and was sent to the office, where an officer was dispatched after he again refused to...

Wishing Americans a happy Father’s Day, the White House tweeted a picture of President Obama and one of his daughters playing with toy water pistols. The Tweet comes at a time when several schools around the country—fearful that such toys make kids more prone to violent behavior—have launched trade-in programs that encourage children to exchange their harmless toy guns for chances to win prizes, like books and bicycles. One such trade-in took place last weekend at Strobridge Elementary in California. Principal Chris Hill, who organized the event, explained that toy guns desensitize kids toward gun violence.

School officials in Calvert County, Maryland have denied a request to expunge the suspension of the kindergartener who brought a plastic cap gun on a school bus last month and then wet his pants during a subsequent interrogation. The refusal came in the form of a letter dated Friday, reports The Washington Post. The letter stated that the five-year-old “did bring a cap gun in his book bag.” It also charged that some other children were frightened and told school officials that they couldn’t discern if the orange-tipped cowboy-style gun was real or fake. The unidentified kindergartener had brought the...

Suspended and arrested after refusing to change his NRA shirt. Today, 14-year-old Jared Marcum appeared before a judge and was officially charged with obstructing an officer. A $500 fine and up to a year in jail, that's the penalty that Jared could face, now that a judge has allowed the prosecution to move forward with it's obstructing an officer charge against him.

Suspended and arrested after refusing to change his NRA shirt. Today, 14-year-old Jared Marcum appeared before a judge and was officially charged with obstructing an officer.

The family of the 7-year-old boy from Ann Arundel County elementary school who was suspended for making a gun shape out of a pastry has tried to clear the boy’s record. This story made headlines across the country as the gun control debate has taken center stage among many elementary schools as some school administrators flex their muscles with a “zero tolerance policy” that excuses itself from common sense. But according to the Baltimore Sun school officials denied the boy’s family’s appeal on Monday, not allowing the boy’s record to be expunged of the incident. Robin Ficker, attorney for Park...

Liberals believe in creating institutions to solve problems. Conservatives believe the individual is better at solving problems. A 3 year-old deaf boy in Lincoln, Nebraska is being bullied by public school officials to change his name because the hand sign for Hunter Spanjer looks like a weapon. The Grand Island school district has a policy that forbids kids bringing to school "any instrument ... that looks like a weapon." They can't change the sign, because it's the official hand sign for his name, registered through S.E.E., Sign Exact English. Pressure from the National Association of the Deaf and the public...

The specter of school shootings has brought a too-typical staple to local newspaper sections: the boys disciplined at (or suspended from) grade school for bringing a toy gun or anything resembling a gun. The Washington Post just found the latest wild overreaction, from Calvert County, Md., a blue state that's cracked down on gun rights. "A kindergartner who brought a cowboy-style cap gun onto his Calvert County school bus was suspended for 10 days after showing a friend the orange-tipped toy, which he had tucked inside his backpack on his way to school," according to the family.

OWINGS, MD -- The father of a middle schooler in Calvert County, Md. says his 11-year-old son was suspended for 10 days for merely talking about guns on the bus ride home. Bruce Henkelman of Huntingtown says his son, a sixth grader at Northern Middle School in Owings, was talking with friends about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre when the bus driver hauled him back to school to be questioned by the principal, Darrel Prioleau. "The principal told me that with what happened at Sandy Hook if you say the word 'gun' in my school you are going to...

To follow up on the recent story about a five-year-old boy suspended for showing a cap gun to his friend on a school bus, Investor's Business Daily relates a charming collection of similar anecdotes regarding such child abuse at U.S. re-education camps -- oops, I mean public schools. Each tale involves a very young child receiving severe punishment for the offense of imagining he had a gun. In the most recent case in question, a kindergarten student in Maryland shows his cap gun to a friend, and is browbeaten for two hours by school officials, without his mother even being...

In the latest incident of anti-gun hysteria to erupt in a school setting, a kindergarten boy has been suspended from school for 10 days because he showed a friend his cowboy-style cap gun on the way to school.

At a fundraiser last night in San Francisco, President Barack Obama said that the Newtown killer gunned down 20 children using a "fully automatic weapon." From the official transcript, provided by the White House: Now, over the next couple of months, we’ve got a couple of issues: gun control. (Applause.) I just came from Denver, where the issue of gun violence is something that has haunted families for way too long, and it is possible for us to create common-sense gun safety measures that respect the traditions of gun ownership in this country and hunters and sportsmen, but also make...

BALTIMORE, - A Maryland father said it was "insanity" to suspend his 7-year-old son from school for chewing his breakfast pastry into the shape of a gun. Josh Welch, a second-grader at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, said he was trying to chew his breakfast pastry into the shape of a mountain during breakfast at the school Friday, WBFF-TV, Baltimore, reported Monday. "It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it wasn't." the boy said. "All I was trying to...

Glenn is PO'd this morning about the two recent school incidents involving guns, the Pop Tart "gun" story, and the Florida story, where the kid who wrestled a gun away from a gunman was suspended, because he didn't wait for "first responders." He's been asking, "When America, are you going to take your children out of these schools?" "I know it's hard... You say, 'I don't know how to homeschool.' Well, I don't either. But we're doing it."

KDVR NEWS – A 2nd grader has been suspended from school in Loveland for a make believe game he was playing. The 7-year-old says he was trying to save the world. But school administrators say he broke a key rule during his pretend play. “I was trying to save people and I just can’t believe I got dispended,” says Alex Evans, who doesn’t understand his suspension any better than he can pronounce it. “It’s called ‘rescue the world,’” he says. He was playing a game during recess at Loveland’s Mary Blair Elementary School and threw an imaginary grenade into a...