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Taking on a 9-year-old boy who is about to have an act of the Legislature named in his honor is asking for trouble.

There were no nays when the House last week passed a bill establishing the Ka'Mauri Harrison Act. A university president, the ACLU and the NRA all rushed in to take the lad's side, so it required guts for Jefferson Parish Schools Superintendent James Gray to remain defiant. Hats off to him for that.

This is a fight he can't win, however, and his refusal to strike fourth grader Ka'Mauri's six-day suspension is starting to look not so much gutsy as pigheaded.

Ka'Mauri was originally recommended for expulsion, so maybe school administrators figured they'd get credit for leniency. Instead they find themselves denounced for racism.

Alanah Odoms, executive director of the ACLU in Louisiana, and Walter Kimbrough, president of Dillard University, both weighed in to suggest that a white boy in Ka'Mauri's shoes would have escaped punishment. Odoms cited the deeply rooted racism that she believes fuels the school-to-prison pipeline, while Kimbrough spoke up for Ka'Mauri because he wants his own black son to be viewed through a lens of innocence.

Nobody can say for sure whether administrators had racist motivations, but what we can confidently assert is that they emerge from the brouhaha looking excessively foolish.

Jefferson Parish School Board member Simeon Dickerson endorsed the sentiments of Odoms and Kimbrough, declaring that the penalty was disproportionate to Ka'Mauri's offense. What offense? No lens of innocence is required to view the undisputed facts of the case and fail to discern what the lad did wrong. Gray has refused to revoke the suspension and issue an apology, but the longer he holds out, the greater the embarrassment when he is eventually obliged to fold.

Ka'Mauri would not have gotten into hot water had the coronavirus not forced education online. There he was taking a test at home when the younger brother who shares his room tripped over a BB gun that had been placed on the floor. Ka'Mauri picked it up, stood it by his seat and resumed the test. The teacher spied on her computer screen what she mistook for a full-sized rifle and noted Ka'Mauri would be recommended for expulsion.

A kid would have to be a serious danger to deserve being kicked out of class and having a firearms offense placed on his record. Nobody who regards that as a fair outcome in this case is cut out to take care of children.

The pretext was that, in the age of remote schooling, a student's home is an extension of the campus and the rule forbidding the possession of guns therefore applies. Thus no distinction is drawn between one student who comes to regular class toting a semi-automatic and another who keeps what is not much more than a toy in his private quarters.

State Attorney General Jeff Landry announced an investigation and said this child's Second Amendment rights may have been violated. God help Louisiana if we give children the same gun rights as adults, but no constitutional amendment is as dear to Louisiana legislators as the second.

The House of Representatives therefore rushed to approve the Ka'Mauri Harrison Act, which retroactively gives students the right to appeal an expulsion order in court even if it is reduced to a suspension. The act provides for attorney fees and damages to be awarded and requires every school district to call a meeting of a disciplinary policy review committee before the end of the year to ensure that the privacy rights of students and their families are protected during online instruction.

Disallowing BB guns in cyberspace had to be unthinkable to legislators who always take the position that what Louisiana needs is more deadly weapons in the real world, including schools. Two years ago, they exempted anyone with a concealed carry permit from the law that bans firearms in them.

Teachers and administrators, who may not have relished the prospect of conferences with the armed parents of failed students, objected, but anyone who went to protest at a committee hearing first had to be pass through a metal detector first.

Legislators aren't brave enough to allow guns in the Capitol.

Email James Gill at gill504nola@gmail.com.

Originally posted here:
James Gill: Jefferson hasn't learned its lessons on Second Amendment power at the Capitol - NOLA.com