300+ School Students Secretly Expelled From Montana Schools For Legal Hunting Rifles

300+ School Students Secretly Expelled From Montana Schools For Legal Hunting Rifles
Public Warning from Montana Gun Group.

guns in cars
300+ School Students Secretly Expelled From Montana Schools For Legal Hunting Rifles
Montana Shooting Sports Association
Montana Shooting Sports Association

MISSOULA, MONT. –-(Ammoland.com)- The Montana Shooting Sports Association (MSSA) warns the public about a culture of secrecy surrounding student expulsions from public high schools in Montana.

Over 300 (maybe over 400) Montana students have been expelled since 1996, most for inadvertently leaving hunting rifles locked in student vehicles in school parking lots as recently happened in Columbia Falls.

Operating in a common pattern across Montana, school officials advise parents of to-be-expelled students that school board hearings to finalize expulsion will be closed to the media and public, ostensibly to protect the privacy of the student involved.

Parents are led to believe that such privacy closure is required. They are not informed that they can waive privacy and allow media and the public to attend and witness such hearings. This sometimes real concern about student privacy also conveniently allows school officials to hide these too-common expulsions from public awareness – to sweep this common practice under the school rug.

“School officials almost always claim their hands are tied by law,” MSSA President Gary Marbut commented, “and they have no choice but to expel students.”

But, Marbut explained, this claim is simply not correct. State law allows discipline for these cases to be determined on a case-by-case basis, and federal law exempts from enforcement any firearm locked inside a vehicle on school property. “The hang ’em high misapplication of the law gets so cloaked in secrecy that the public is prevented from knowing how widespread this abuse is” Marbut said.

MSSA asks parents and students to spread the word that parents clearly may waive student privacy if they wish, allowing them to pack the expulsion hearing room with media, friends and members of the public in order to shed some daylight on this secretive expulsion practice by education officials. Students will usually benefit from public exposure of these instances, such as the recent one in Columbia Falls, where students are forced to an expulsion hearing and traumatized over conduct that is actually protected under the federal Gun Free Schools Act. The public needs to know which school board members tolerate such institutionalized abuse by school officials.

MSSA also encourages parents of any high school students expelled for having a hunting arm in a vehicle on school property to contact MSSA at 549-1252 or [email protected].

Gary Marbut, president
Montana Shooting Sports Association
www.mtssa.org
Author, Gun Laws of Montana
www.mtpublish.com

About Montana Shooting Sports Association:
MSSA is the primary political advocate for Montana gun owners. Visit: www.mtssa.org