Narrow Escape from Terror: Child Suspended After a Quarter-Sized Gun Keychain Falls from His Backpack

Imagine the terror of looking over at the 12 year old next to you and seeing fall from his backpack … A GUN!!!!!

That was precisely what happened at Alan Shawn Feinstein Middle School in Coventry, R.I last week in a terrifying episode that thankfully left no one injured and left one 7th grader named Joseph Lyssikatos suspended and banned from the school trip.

Of course, the gun was on a keychain and was the size of a quarter.

The two-inch keychain fell out of Lyssikatos’s backpack while he was at school.

After another kid picked it up and displayed it to other students, a teacher intervened and impounded the keychain.

Apparently fearing that the roughly quarter-sized hunk of cheap metal was somehow a danger to life and limb, school officials sprang into action. They suspended Lyssikatos for three days. He has also been banned from an upcoming class field trip.

The boy’s parents aren’t pleased.

“This boy was the one waving it or showing it to other kids. Not Joseph,” Bonnie Bonanno, Joseph’s stepmother, told WJAR. “Joseph wasn’t doing that so why weren’t both of them reprimanded?”

Lyssikatos noted that he got the tiny keychain at a local arcade with go-karts and such in exchange for 25 tickets.

Someone called a behavioral specialist at Feinstein Middle School informed the boy’s parents of the suspension. The parents say the principal and the school district superintendent won’t return phone calls.

The Feinstein Middle School handbook entitled “Serious Disciplinary Infractions” declares: “Possession/carrying/use of/threat of use of a firearm or replica shall result in a recommendation for expulsion for a period of time up to one full calendar year.”

The boy’s father, Keith Bonanno, claimed on WPRO radio that the behavioral specialist told him his son was “lucky that he didn’t get suspended for 10 days, or even worse expelled.” (source)

The nation is gripped with a media-fueled anti-gun hysteria. Perfectly safe and legal activities are under scrutiny, like the kids who were playing with an airsoft gun at home and somehow managed to get suspended from school. Like the kid who bit his Pop-tart into a mountain but got suspended because it looked like a gun. Like the child who was suspended for bringing a terrifying pink Hello Kitty bubble gun to school. Like the kid whose birthday cupcakes were confiscated because they had army guys with guns on them. Heck, kids aren’t even supposed to talk about guns and the schools are convincing them that they should be petrified by these things by offering them counseling.

When can we institute a zero tolerance policy on stupidity?