Pop-Tart gun bill passes Senate, one step from law

The Nevada Senate passed a bill Friday that would allow students to bring a small toy gun to school, point their finger like a gun or even brandish "a partially consumed pastry or other food item to simulate a firearm."

Basically, Nevada students could do everything short of possessing a real firearm and schools would be forbidden from punishing them, according to protections proposed in Assembly Bill 121, which now only needs Gov. Brian Sandoval's signature to become law for all Nevada elementary and middle schools.

The Senate passed AB121 without debate in a 15-6 vote on Friday, and the bill already passed the Assembly in a 24-17 vote.

The bill lists all kinds of weapon-related actions that would be protected from discipline in school:

• Doodling a gun or dangerous weapon on a sheet of paper.

• Twirling a pencil like a cowboy handling his revolver.

• Simulating a gun with building blocks.

• Wearing clothes depicting firearms or expressing an opinion regarding the constitutional right to bear arms.

That doesn't mean students could do whatever they want with these simulated weapons.

Under the bill, students could still be disciplined for disrupting learning, causing bodily harm to others or making anyone believe they might be harmed.

A recent bill amendment also limits these protections to students in kindergarten through eighth grade. High schools could still punish students for bringing toy guns to school or simulating a firearm.

Bill creator Assemblyman Jim Wheeler, R-Minden, has called it a needed measure in today's world of "political correctness taken too far."

He referenced scenarios played out in schools across the nation.

In 2013, a Baltimore-area school suspended a 7-year-old boy for chewing a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun. That case sparked Wheeler's bill, which has come to be known as the Pop-Tart gun bill.

In 2014, a Pennsylvania elementary school suspended a 7-year-old boy for bringing his toy gun — complete with orange plastic tip — to school. The teacher only discovered the gun because the boy realized it had been left in his backpack from a sleepover and told the teacher about the mistake.

The examples are many, going so far as a New Jersey seventh-grader suspended last year for twirling a pencil around his finger, which school officials took as an intimidating act simulating a gun.

However, Wheeler and bill proponents have provided no examples from Nevada.

Wheeler asserts the bill is proactive, an effort to prevent similar national headlines about Nevada schools.

Contact reporter Trevon Milliard at tmilliard@rgj.com or 775-788-6343. Follow him on twitter: @TrevonMilliard.