In what would just make us shake our heads in wonder, a school suspends for one year two kids who played airsoft guns in one the kid's own backyard. If you're thinking of an overzealous and overreaching school officials, then you are absolutely correct. We all know that a school does not have control on what happens on one's home and a very flimsy excuse to justify their decision. This story as initially scooped by Thumpy's 3-D House of Airsoft, tells why.

Two kids, Khalid Carballo and Aidan Clark, who are Seventh Graders in Virginia Beach, Va, might also be facing expulsion. While they do have disciplinary records in school, it is still not a business of the school on what they do outside of the school jurisdiction. According to Wavy.com, on September 12, the kids claimed that they were shooting an airsoft gun Iin Carballo's own backyard as they waited for the school bus and left the airsoft gun at home when the school bus arrived.

Three days before that, a female neighbor, while she knows that the kids were playing with airsoft guns, nevertheless called the 911 telling them that she felt uncomfortable with the kid pointing a gun. And the September 12 incident, the boys were playing airsoft with other kids, including the caller's own child. But another 911 call by somebody else led to an investigation by school officials.

The Police did not file charges against the kids but the school, due to a "Zero Tolerance" policy, decided to suspend the kids for "posession, handling and use of firearm." The kids were playing with the cheap Zombie Killer airsoft pistols sold by Crosman, which are shrink-wrapped products that can be bought from any store, unlike other airsoft guns where you get them from stricter airsoft shops.

In all honesty, sometimes it's really not advisable showing off realistic looking toys in the backyard where neighbors get to see the gun from outside. In some countries, airsoft communities advice not showing the airsoft guns at all in the backyard, or make sure no one is looking into the backyard when playing or firing an airsoft gun. As Thumpy says:

The key is to educate the public and ALL airsofters of our modified version of Colonel Cooper's rules:  ALWAYS Treat every AIRSOFT gun as if it is real, loaded and can be perceived by others to others who don't/can't know the difference;

NEVER point your airsoft gun at anything you don't intend to shoot, destroy, injure or disturb;

KEEP your finger off the trigger until you align your sights on something you intend to destroy, like your career, your ability to go to school, drive a car, vote in an election. Yeah, you can destroy things BEHIND the muzzle just as easily as you can in front of it; and,

KEEP your focus on what your target is and what is beyond that target.  And, THUMPY posits that a TARGET for airsofters might also include anyone who could do harm to our game by legislating it out of existence, through the irresponsible acts of any one of us.

But still, it's no business for the school to meddle in what is an action inside a private property. While we understand that schools in the USA are fully on guard against guns in school as schools are favorite targets in mass shootings, a home is another matter, and it is something to be settled by the neighbors together with the kids' parents if they do feel uncomfortable with airsoft guns. A compromise will always be reached when a dialogue is made, just quickly reaching for the phone to dial 911 may not exactly be the best recourse in this situation.

Many people are appalled by this decision of the school, which is excessive and the boys will have to find an alternative school while they remain suspended with the danger of being expelled by the school. Even Piers Morgan of CNN, who doesn't have fans in the firearms community for his strong opinions against gun ownership in the US, doesn't agree also with the action of the school.

The school should not have suspended the kids and for the kids not to be seen so out in the open with realistic looking airsoft guns even if they are in their own backyard. Who knows? A neighbor who owns a real gun might just mistake the airsoft gun for real and shoots them?