ACLU opposes baseball bat control

By Dean Rieck

According to the Boston Globe, the City Council in Lynn, MA have decided to allow police to arrest students who bring baseball bats and other "weapons" to school.

However the ACLU, famous for their inconsistent stance on gun control, opposes this ordinance.

Here are the facts:

• Lynn City Council wants to be "proactive" in making schools safer, authorizing police to arrest students who "bring to school objects that could be used as weapons."

• The new ordinance defines "weapon" as any item that is otherwise legal but COULD be used to "inflict physical harm." This includes, but is not limited to, air guns, pellet guns, BB guns, fireworks, bats, and clubs."

• Authorities will know when a weapon COULD be used to inflict physical harm by deciding, apparently on the spot, if the object has a "legitimate purpose."

• Lynn Police Chief Kevin F. Coppinger justifies this ordinance by saying that previously police had to actually take kids to court. But now police could act immediately. In other words, it was just too difficult to arrest kids before and now they can act on their own authority without the burden of proof.

• The police chief noted, however, that authorities have not seen any increase in kids bringing weapons to school. It's just something they've wanted to do for a while.

This overstepping of authority in an urban area is not surprising. What is surprising is the reaction of the local American Civil Liberties Union.

Carol Rose, Executive Director of the Massachusetts ACLU said "police should focus on students' actions rather than criminalizing objects that may have uses other than as weapons."

Rose further commented, "Virtually any object, such as a shoe, could be used to attack another person. If the ordinance doesn’t clearly delineate specific weapons they [officials] have in mind, it has the potential to be overly broad."

Kudos to the ACLU for recognizing that police should not be able to act as judge and jury. But if they oppose the criminalization of objects and prefer law enforcement to focus on actions, why would they not apply the same logic in other circumstances?

Let me propose an answer. The ACLU opposes this ordinance because it's about police arresting minority kids in an urban area, and the rights of minorities must be protected. But the ACLU doesn't have the same concern about gun owners because most of them aren't minorities and their rights in their eyes just aren't as important.

Again, I applaud the ACLU for opposing this Orwellian city ordinance and being a watchdog for citizens' rights. I just wish they would show the same concern over the Second Amendment as they do for the other nine.

After all, for responsible adults, guns are specifically protected by the Constitution. Baseball bats are not.

Dean Rieck is the Marketing Director of Second Call Defense and a Leader with Buckeye Firearms Association.