ACLU defends teacher suspended for holding gun in Facebook photo.

[benEzra]

http://www.wkowtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=9802250&nav=menu1362_2

ACLU of Wisconsin: School should allow teacher to pose with rifle on Facebook

A Beaver Dam Middle School teacher, Betsy Ramsdale, should not have been put on administrative leave simply because of a photo on Facebook showing her training a rifle at the camera. While school safety is of paramount importance, public school teachers do not lose their right to free expression when they are not working.

The context of the photo, the whole Facebook page, is important to understand before taking action against a teacher, who happens to be a gun enthusiast. Media accounts of the photo do not indicate any additional grounds for concern. Beaver Dam School District superintendent Donald Childs is reported to be unaware of any sinister intent.

"Absent any evidence that the teacher poses a threat, the district should not over-react to the sight of a gun in one of their employee's hands," said Chris Ahmuty, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin today.

Good.

[MrModerate]

1. I'm a proud gun-grabber, but I don't think this is reasonable . . .

on the school's part. I can't get to the photo, but from descriptions it seems (maybe) tasteless but otherwise unremarkable.

I will say these two things:

1) Overreaction seems to be school boards' middle name. Across the country you continually hear of wildly disproportionate responses to perfectly legal and reasonable behavior, as well as to behavior that is understood to be unthreatening when coming from 6-year-olds where it wouldn't from 26-year-olds. Is there something in the training or character of people drawn to the education field that makes them such goofuses?

2) Facebook is *not* private. One forgets that at one's peril. If you're going to do something stupid-but-not-illegal, don't expect to escape notice just because you posted it on a social networking site that any one of 5 billion people might see.

[guntard]

8. "Zero tolerance" = "Zero judgement"

It's a new educational paradigm!

[krispos42]

10. Here's the pic

Looks like a shotgun, though.

[tularetom]

2. Um she should never point a firearm at ANYBODY

She should be suspended for violating one of the most basic rules of gun safety.

Good for the ACLU for defending her right to be photographed with a gun.

But shame on her for being stupid.

[Endangered Specie]

3. who is to say that she didnt put the camera on timer?

[benEzra]

5. Even the cheapest cameras these days have delay timers and tripod mounts,

or you can just set the camera on a bookshelf. And based on the fuzziness, those stills could even be frame captures from a video clip.

I've shot a couple of point-at-the-camera .avi clips to evaluate the brightness of a Surefire G3 LED mounted on my AK in low light. Used a tripod. You don't have to violate Rule Two.

[krispos42]

11. Probably one of those ball-shaped webcams that sit on a monitor n/t

[57_TomCat]

16. Looks like it was placed on the floor....

and she was in the prone position when photographed. BIG honking barrel! :)

[iverglas]

12. "Good for the ACLU for defending her right to be photographed with a gun."

If only that was what she had done, and what the ACLU has done.

The photograph doesn't depict her "with a gun" any more than the photographs from Abu Ghraib depicted people "with other people".

The photograph depicted her training a firearm on the viewer of the photograph.

Shame on you for being disingenuous.

[friendly_iconoclast]

14. It's a gun, not a basilisk. It won't shoot through the intertubes.

(See Charles Stross' Hugo Award-winning "Concrete Jungle" for the SCORPION STARE reference...)

Absent a threatening message to go with the low-res webcam photo, there is no threat to anyone,
just some control freak school admin having a moral panic moment.

[Lost in CT]

4. This is almost beyond stupid.

What possible objection could there be.

There is nothing illegal about owning a gun.

If a teacher has a photo of themselves smoking on the internet should they be fired as well?

[SteveM]

6. Gun ownership is now in the context of prohibitionist politics...

Once prohibitionism infects an "issue," then blanket bans, arbitrary punishment and shaming become the order of the day. Public schools are notorious (even proud) of being the submissive conduit for behavioral engineers demanding folks comport with their way of being. The sport of such suppressive activities is indicated by the District's super who maintains he is unaware of any sinister intent; all the better so the public can puzzle over why someone is in the stocks.

[jody]

7. Good for ACLU of Wisconsin! I wonder if ACLU National approves? n/t

[Hoopla Phil]

9. Good to hear.

[Indy Lurker]

13. She wasn't terminated

Simply put on administrative leave.

If a teacher shot a bunch of students and it was then discovered that the school was aware of a picture of the teacher such as this was around but the school didn't investigate, the school would be blamed.

Once the teacher is deemed not to be a threat to herself or others, she should be allowed to return to school.


First amendment rights do not extend to protection from employers, (except for some union related activities) Had the teacher been spouting racist neo-Nazi speech, she would be terminated immediately.

[nitrogen76]

15. Notice it was the ACLU that defended her, NOT the NRA?