20 Louisiana Students Could be Expelled for Pointing Finger Guns

Fox News is reporting that more than twenty Louisiana middle schoolers are facing expulsion from school after making a pair of social media videos featuring them pointing "finger guns."

In their report, they quote one of the parents of an L. J. Alleman Middle School student who is among those suspended and facing expulsion who told The Advocate,

I want to say this on a hill loud and proud, I believe that LPSS is trying to make an example of these kids and make it look like they handled a threat that didn’t even exist.

At the root of the issue is a pair of videos the students allegedly filmed on school grounds as part of a TikTok challenge for Nardo Wick's song, "Who Wants Smoke" where the students are pointing their hands like "finger guns" or using their cell phones as props of imaginary guns.

School administrators deemed the students' actions an infraction of discipline code 70, which addresses the crime of violent assault and battery.

A group of parents of the offending students has hired an attorney who was quoted by katc.com as saying, "We’re not saying there needs to be an absence of punishment. No, but the punishment needs to fit the behavior." The attorney goes on to add that "he believes the disciplinary action in this case needs to be based on a student-by-student basis."

Not having seen the offending videos myself, I can't attest to the validity, or lack thereof, of the merits of the charges by the Lafayette Parish School System, but it certainly does lend itself to demonstrating just how much our country has changed since the days of pop guns and harmless games of "cops and robbers."