105

After a shooter killed six people at Nashville’s Covenant School in 2023, Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature ignored calls to pass gun control measures. Instead, they passed a series of increasingly punitive laws aimed not only at preventing future violence but dissuading kids from making threats that disrupt school and terrify other students.

Two contradictory laws went into effect before this school year began. One requires school officials to expel a student only if their investigation finds the threat is “valid,” a term that the law does not define. The other mandates that police charge people, including kids, with felonies for making threats of any kind, credible or not. As a result, students across the state can be arrested for statements that wouldn’t even get them expelled.

Tennessee has not yet released statewide data on how many arrests for threats of mass violence have been made since school started in August. But Hamilton County arrested 18 students in the first six weeks of the school year, more than twice as many as Nashville’s Davidson County — despite Hamilton having far fewer students. Data that ProPublica and WPLN obtained through a records request shows that at least 519 students were charged with threats of mass violence last school year, when it was a misdemeanor, an increase from 442 the prior year. Many of them were middle schoolers and most were boys. The youngest child charged last school year was 7 years old.

top 14 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[-] JoMiran@lemmy.ml 36 points 5 days ago

Tennessee Police Arrested Him Anyway.

Of course they did. The kid is black, in Tennessee. Once he reaches puberty they'll just shoot him instead.

I wish this was more of a joke than it actually is.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 22 points 5 days ago

"Black kid?"

(reads article)

"Yup, black kid."

[-] kboy101222@sh.itjust.works 20 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Went back to a TN high school recently for the first time since graduating to do some work.

They had to call local police to check my tool box to make sure it didn't have a gun hidden anywhere, which took almost an hour.

Every single door is locked constantly. Every classroom is locked with a key, so anyone needing to get inside needs the knock to be let in and disturb class. If the teacher needs to go to the bathroom between periods, all the students not already in the class are locked outside.

At one point, I left a door propped open cause I didn't want to disturb the people running lines. The principal, who used to be my principal at another school, attempted to give yell at me over it.

They've also distributed an iPad to every student to act as a hall pass. Except they have to request the pass, raise their hand, ask to use the bathroom, then the teacher has to pull out their iPad and approve it. All of this takes a ton of time.

Starting this year, they only get 3 passes a day. Period. Anymore and the principal has to approve it personally or it's detention. They have nothing in place to make it so kids with intestinal issues can have more passes, and this systems been in place for 3 years now. Every student I talked to told me they knew someone who pissed their pants in class because they weren't allowed to leave under threat of detention or suspension.

TN schools and TN in general is just fucked beyond belief now. And the people who put all these ridiculous policies into place are all currently running unopposed.

The Covenant School shooting and moronic conservative parents having an insane amount of control has straight up regresses TN schools to a worse point of security theatre than post columbine or 9/11. All over a single shooting.

Edit: apologies for my horrendous grammar. However, I'm currently too tired to fix it right now

[-] RaoulDook@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago

Wow that's horrible, and has to be terrible for kids' mental health and general perspective on the world. Kids should know what freedom feels like and expect it as the default, and this kind of repression is liable to result in more outbursts of any kind.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 23 points 5 days ago

Tennessee's child labor law allows children as young as 14 to work.

Prisoners are legal slaves and can be compelled to work.

I guess we have Trump's solution to replacing all the jobs after expelling all the immigrants.

[-] FlightyPenguin@lemmy.world 12 points 5 days ago

Prison slavery is actually now unconstitutional in the state, as of TN's last election.

[-] littletoolshed@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago

I am not disagreeing with you, just wanted to point out that the age minimum in the US is set at the federal level, and then the states can further restrict; I don’t think they can go below the federal limit:

The Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) sets wage, hours worked, and safety requirements for minors (individuals under age 18) working in jobs covered by the statute. The rules vary depending upon the particular age of the minor and the particular job involved. As a general rule, the FLSA sets 14 years old as the minimum age for employment, and limits the number of hours worked by minors under the age of 16.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 10 points 5 days ago

I would feel more comfortable about that if it wasn't clear that red states couldn't give less of a shit what the federal law is anymore.

[-] littletoolshed@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

Absolutely agree.

Btw, the entertainment industry has also gotten their way with child labor, I just noticed this for CA: https://www.dir.ca.gov/dlse/MinorsSummaryCharts.pdf

Sometimes we forget that child actors are labor too.

[-] atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 20 points 5 days ago

The other mandates that police charge people, including kids, with felonies for making threats of any kind, credible or not.

Holy shit is that true? Kids say stupid things ALL THE TIME. They're impulsive and don't understand what it means to think about the future. And you're going to put a FELONY on that kids record???

[-] Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 points 5 days ago

The world is fucked up enough as it is and now these kids are starting life as felons. Can't get a job, can't vote, etc. For saying something dumb as a child.

Fuck this country man I'm done. If Harris doesn't win I'm working on an exit strategy.

[-] nokturne213@sopuli.xyz 6 points 5 days ago

Hell I am in my 40s and am neurodivergent and say stupid shit all the time.

[-] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 7 points 5 days ago

Gotta feed the orphan crushing machine.

[-] masterofn001@lemmy.ca 4 points 5 days ago

Valid or not.

Time to check out the publicly available names and numbers of those Rs.

this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
105 points (98.2% liked)

News

23305 readers
3662 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS