“A plastic toy gun [above] is to blame for the mayhem that saw a man arrested at his daughter’s school this week,” therecord.com reveals (from the wilds of Kitchener, Canada). Sure, blame the gun. In fact, the chain of event leading to Jessie Sansone’s worst day ever started when his four-year-old daughter Neaveh drew a picture of a man holding a gun at school. To be clear, Neaveh was at school, not the gun. The man in the picture wasn’t at a school, either. It was a drawing of a man holding a gun. When Neaveh’s teacher asked her young charge about the image, she IDed the man in the pic as her Dad who used the weapon to “kill bad guys and monsters.” And that’s when all hell broke loose . . .

Neaveh’s teacher at Forest Hill Public School was concerned by the drawing and called Family and Children’s Services, who assessed the case and called police. After being interviewed by police at the school, Sansone was handcuffed and taken to the police station in a cruiser.

There, Sansone said, he was forced to remove his clothes for a full strip search.

Sansone’s wife, Stephanie Squires, was also taken to the police station.

Three of the children were taken to Family and Children’s Services to be interviewed.

It was found in the home of the Kitchener father of four after he was arrested over a drawing his daughter drew at the school on Wednesday. Jessie Sansone was strip-searched but not charged.

Note: Sansone told the paper that he had a previous conviction for assault and attempted burglary. Nothing firearms-related, apparently. Anyway, the school board, police and child welfare officials immediately apologized to the Sansones for the entire incident. Not.

The school board, police and child welfare officials all say proper procedure was followed in the case.

“We did what we were supposed to do,” said Gregg Bereznick, the Waterloo Region District School Board’s superintendent of education.

Now where have I heard that excuse before? Godwin’s Law indeed.

39 COMMENTS

  1. “she IDed the man in the pic as her Dad who used the weapon to “kill bad guys and monsters.”

    Of course her daddy protects her from bad guys and monsters. That’s what daddy’s do. I can imagine it now with the little girl turning to her daddy after watching TV and asking her daddy if he will protect her like the good man in the movie did…

    BTW, I’m glad that the little girl has a daddy who picks her up at school. I think about 50% of children now are growing up without a daddy. Then along comes the hysterical school employees, police, and C&FS, and pow to daddy.

    • Can you imagine taking what a 4 year old says at face value to the point where you involve the police, right away?

      These are laughable circumstances, and all the adults who furthered this should be ashamed of themselves.

  2. LOL! Canadians. I grew up in Canada. I had a Nun call me crazy and call my mom because I drew a picture of a guy with a knife. My mom told her to go $^&* herself and asked if they watch the news at the convent. A couple weeks later (grade 6) we watched uncensored pictures of the holocaust. 😉 Yeah! I was the crazy one.

  3. Let this stand as a warning to those who would attempt to “compromise” with the leftists on the topic of gun rights.Such people will not stop until saying the word “gun” carries a 20 year prison term.

    • That’s like a gun grabber pointing to Loughner and saying, “see what you get when you compromise with fascists.”

      • This is a false choice,as Loughner has documented mental problems and thus made the decision to murder bystanding individuals at a political rally.He is no more alike to any of us gun owners than Hitler is to the American Democratic Party.

        Leftists’ goal with regard to weapons is to disarm everyone, and it doesn’t stop with actual firearms. Once real weapons are outlawed, they start in on the toy guns and utility knives. In Australia the legal steps required to own a BB pistol such as the one depicted above require nearly equal effort than what some people here expend to acquire an ATF SBR Tax Stamp.

        My initial comment is intended to be humorous hyperbole, but the truth about “gun control” is that it doesn’t stop with just the firearms. There are people in the UK who believe *kitchen knives* should be banned .
        http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/4581871.stm

        ###################
        They argued many assaults are committed impulsively, prompted by alcohol and drugs, and a kitchen knife often makes an all too available weapon.

        The research is published in the British Medical Journal.

        The researchers said there was no reason for long pointed knives to be publicly available at all.#########

  4. Great. Now it’s illegal to be a father. Shocking.

    We did what we were supposed to do

    We were only following orders!

    Hope the guy sues, and wins, one hell of a lot.

    • The main reason action was taken is A. he’s a convicted felon B. he has no legal way to own a gun (see A.) C. handguns are STRICTLY regulated in Canada, and any implication that a convicted criminal would have one is cause for response. Handguns, even if legally owned and registered, are tightly regulated (waaaay more than long guns) – there is a public fear of handguns as they are often smuggled in and used in gang crimes. That is what the media exposes the public to – responsible handgun owners are a nonexistent in the media.

  5. “We did what we were supposed to do.” Where have we heard that before?

    “I vas only following orders. Der Furher vas der commander!”

    On the other hand, this is a valuable learning experience for the Sansone children. Given the reaction of the school authorities and the police to a DRAWING, and a PLASTIC gun, the children may justifiably conclude that their government is there to help them! And that their schools and government agencies are staffed and run by complete idiots. A valuable lesson which they need to remember as they progress through the government-school brainwashing process.

  6. And there-in lies the entire problem to parenting today. Laws and know-better administrators keep parents from parenting. God-forbid a child even draws a picture of a firearm at school. There is ZERO emphasis placed on personal responsibility at most schools. Many policies such as suspending and expelling both parties of a fight and not the primary aggressor merely add to the new social norm of faultless consequence. Mediocrity and conformance is the only thing that is preached.

    I’m sure this next statement will be quite inflammatory. When I was in college, many of my classmates who failed out of engineering ended up in the college of education. This is not to discount the fact that many excellent teachers study education to realize their dreams; but it does make one wonder the quality of a good portion of teachers and administrators that ended up in the profession.

    • And these facts help explain why homeschooling has increased by a huge amount over the last 20 years. What is it now, 5 million children homeschooled?

    • Those who can’t teach gym sell gym shoes and those who can’t sell gym shoes wear them while running away after robbing someone on the street.

    • After this post I was about to sign up for the 5-day Introductory Toy Gun course at Funsite (Gold, not Gray!) in Maulden, AZ, but now you’ve made me doubt the whole teacher efficacy bit. I’m just going to stick with my usual dry-fire practice and rubber dart speed drills. One negligent art-class drawing and they’re gonna come strip-search me anyway. Skill is apparently a non-factor. What is it with this strip searching bit anyway? I never needed a trumped up excuse to do that. Ask my wife.

  7. There, Sansone said, he was forced to remove his clothes for a full strip search.
    Jessie Sansone was strip-searched but not charged.
    “We did what we were supposed to do,” said Gregg Bereznick who is Bi-Curious.

  8. Yes all this is happening in the only large city in the world named after the inventor of modern concentration camps and who used ethnic cleansing to win the war,that would be Lord Kitchener,acts so bad that Hitler used the same practice and went even futher, 50% of the total children population of the Boers died so the Boers were decimated and Anglos won the war. Kitchener is known in his home town in Ireland as the worst kind of murder.no monuement there

    • absolutely , although the catholic and private schools can be ok. my son’s catholic high school has a skeet and trap club . sanctioned by the school.
      they cannot bring the shotguns on school property, but it’s still a great thing.

  9. Hmmm….. All of this based on a child’s drawing. I can only imagine what kind of investigation they’ll have when she draws a picture of herself riding a unicorn.

  10. If a little child drew a picture of a woman holding a gun and ID it as mommy who protects the little child from bad men and monsters I wonder what the teacher’s response would have been?

    • Arrest the daddy for abuse. Obviously the mommy wouldn’t need to protect the children from any bad men within the home unless daddy was being abusive.

  11. Actually, this sort of thing is the main reason why my kids (6 and 5) know nothing about the guns in our house. We don’t talk about them and they have never seen any of them. Kids say the darndest things and with the anti-gun sentiment that seems to pervade our society, I just don’t need that sort of grief.

    As an aside, we just found out tonight that the father of one of our kids friends keeps a loaded .357 pistol in his nightstand drawer. I’m sorry, but in this day and age of quick access gun safes, there is absolutely no excuse for that sort of thing when you have young children in the house.

    • Agreed. We don’t have kids yet, but we’ve gotten into the habit already, guns are either in the safe locked, in a quick access safe by the bed, or in a holster on me or my wife. The only time they’re out of those locations is when they’re being cleaned on the workbench in the basement or being loaded into the car for a range trip. As for when we do have children, they probably won’t be told until they’re an appropiate age and maturity.

  12. This is dumb. I took a “creativity test for gifted children” in 3rd grade to get into a gifted program. We were given a sheet of paper with a hundred set of parallel lines. Ya know what I drew. Guns. Bullets. Knifes. Swords. Rockets. And lots of them. Filled the page.
    And the crazy part is I got accepted into the program without taking any of the math or reading tests. Or psychological tests. So yea. I was an awesome 8 year old.

  13. I’m wondering if he did own a real gun, is that illegal? And why does the child’s access to the gun really come into question? Does every father or mother who owns a gun have to have a police search of their home. I’m just having a hard to understanding where the concern is if this is not illegal. What policy must be followed to show a picture of an adult with a gun, which i’m sure was not that detailed. I mean is an adult who has a gun required to go through some kind of process involving social services.

  14. I’m sorry I find it disturbing that a 4 yr old thinks her daddy is shooting anyone even if it is only bad guys and monsters with a fake gun. I own guns and would never expose a 4yr old to a fake or real gun. What message is that sending to the child that it’s ok to shoot people. I think this was handled exactly as it should have been no child of that age should be exposed to any type of guns and perhaps the father should have thought of a better approach o getting rid of monsters.

      • They were not going after him for owning a gun or shooting monsters but endangering the welfare of a child. In that case they were only following protocall. A 4 yr old should not be drawing pictures of anyone shooting anything, what happens in a couple years when that child decides someone in her school is a bad person and gets a hold of a gun. We just had a shooting in a school today in Ohio and a 5th grader in Philidelphia shot another kid with an air gun. Now that 5th grader is suspended and probably will face charges . Things are different from when we were kids and what everyone calls excessive may just save a childs future.

        • I’m not saying I agree with what the dad did, but I still think it is a bit excessive. We can always play the what if game, but I drew plenty of pictures of people shooting other people growing up and I don’t go around shooting people unreasonably.

          This was all thanks to movies and TV shows. In fact, movies, TV, and video games have gotten way more violent and graphic from when I was growing up. Perhaps we should start charging directors and TV stations too. I mean the bad guy always dies…

          • And I agree when we were young these were not issues for us we played cops n robbers but I don’t think at the young age of 4 I new about guns toy or otherwise and we didn’t have the violent tv shows and video games that is why I said we are in different times now introducing any type of weapon to such a young child coupled with the violence they will be exposed to as they grow can add up to trouble or disaster. Not saying this is so for every child but how do you discerne which one will and which one won’t. That is why we have to have a no tolerance system and some cases it will seem authority is excessive but you have to treat everyone the same. They had no idea it wasn’t a real gun until they investigated the man was released not jailed so what real harm was done. I would rather see us error on the side of caution then not do anything for fear of public scrutiny. Just think had they done nothing and it would have been a real gun then say that child got ahold of that gun and shoots herself by accident who then would people blame.

            • Again, these are all “what ifs.” The point was that there was zero threat to the child or the monsters in the closet. Even you said that you played cops and robbers growing up. Do you go around shooting people?

              These are the same slippery slope arguments people make about banning and seizing firearms. He was still arrested and booked into jail although later released. Personal responsibility is far more important than the over-reaching nanny state deciding what is best “for the children.”

        • “What message is that sending to the child that it’s ok to shoot people.”

          Where was it stated that is what the child took from it? From what I read her dad used it to kill bad guys and monsters. The child never said he hunted down people. He was probably defending himself and his child from faux “bad guys” in defense of their lives… isn’t that a justified DGU? Why wouldn’t a parent teach that to their child?

          Kids should be taught about guns and gun safety as soon as they can comprehend the meaning of the words, not at a regulated “age”.

          People who do bad things, ignore laws, and do what they have their hearts set on doing. No law will stop this.

          That 5th grader you mentioned, probably never was taught about gun safety or consequences. They are now learning the hard way.

          “Not saying this is so for every child but how do you discerne which one will and which one won’t. That is why we have to have a no tolerance system and some cases it will seem authority is excessive but you have to treat everyone the same.”

          They need to be taught the difference. It’s not hard.

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