Josh Renville (courtesy startribune.com)

High school student Josh Renville (left) wanted his scowling (a.k.a.. bad ass) yearbook picture to include his AR-15. As reported by startribune.com, Fargo North High School Principal Andy Dahlen had not one, not two, but three reasons why that wasn’t going to happen: “Weapons are banned on school property. Another rule prohibits publishing materials in school-sponsored media that violates federal or state law or promotes violence, terrorism or other illegal activity. A third policy forbids clothing that promotes weapons.” Josh’s old man was none too pleased . . .

Charles Renville put up a Facebook “pose free or die” page. Yes, well, at the end of the proverbial day, Josh (right) capitulated. Through the magic of Photoshop, Josh has replaced his AR with a bald eagle (Talons much? Ouch!).

You might think this kind political correctness in our schools is creating a nation of wimps (young Mr. Renville excepted, of course), but I couldn’t possibly comment. Still, Josh’s trigger discipline is a lesson to us all.

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73 COMMENTS

    • Not necessarily. I know plenty of folks in their 40’s, 50’s and 60’s who are locked into the high school mentality. I suppose high school must be when they peaked to stunt the rest of their development.

      • You’re being generous. I swear half the population never socially matured being the third grade playground.

      • Just think of all the Millennial guys that will look back at their cool high school senior photo with that kick-ass, well groomed man bun 20 years from now. It’s the current generations version of a mullet. Business up front, old librarian in the rear…

    • Those are the talons of tyranny, and he don’t give a #$&#
      Pretty sad about my weak sauce high school pics now…..

  3. That’s one big-assed bird.

    I’ll say one thing about that FakeBook page of his, he doesn’t have to worry about cutting the grass for *that* yard…

  4. I wonder if he could make a “yearbook correction” copy of the original in a paste-over size and distribute them to all his classmates.

    • Owen, I’m fairly close to the student’s area, and I’ll make an effort to get this idea to him and his family, and promote it, as well. I’m not a rich man, but I’ll forgo a couple of boxes of ammo to help make this happen.

      Good thinking, and thanks for posting!

  5. Think how you would look at a teenager in Europe peacocking with the EU flag prominently displayed. Or perhaps 30 years ago with the USSR red and yellow? That’s how I feel about the stars and stripes. I have way too much in my life now worry about propagandizing for the empire.

    • Thanks to the awesomeness that is the United States of America, you don’t have to wrap yourself in her flag, pledge to it, or salute it and what it represents. Go about on your way, hating everything.

    • If it wasn’t for that flag you despise so much there would be no EU flag, but there would definitely be a USSR flag in place of it continent wide.

      • No, my friend. It was the men that stood, protected, fought, bled, and died for our freedom. I love our flag, but realize that it has always been about the people and not the fabric.

  6. That’s just typical Of high school That was originally set up As a socialist Type environment. The creator Of our educational system in this country Based his creation on a socialist type education system which is obvious when you see all the Crazy restrictions In schools against your constitutional rights. Your constitutional rights do not end when you walk on to school property, no matter what that principle may think.

      • +10
        Have your kids indoctrinated with the amoral, pacifist socialism doctrine? No thanks, think I’ll pass.

        Not to mention anyone with an ounce of drive and two brain cells can teach any curriculum better than the “methods” devised in public school bureaucracy.

  7. When I was in Jrotc in high school,2001. We would march around with m14 often. Our in school armory had a dozen m1 garands and maybe 2 dozen m14. The had plugged barrels but still. I was lucky enough to be taught marksmanship by a retired marine sgtmaj, we even had an indoor rifle range for our air rifles.

    • When I was in JROTC (1984) we still had a rifle range in our school.

      Granted they were pellet guns, but you could still put an eye out if you weren’t careful.

    • When I was in high school, we would often bring our chipped flint hand axes and ornately carved mastodon femurs to the cave.

  8. Unless that gun is stolen I can’t think of what laws he broke. The kid is not promoting violence. His clothing has no weapon on it. Sure, weapons aren’t allowed on school property but that is a DEPICTION of a weapon, not an actual weapon on school property.

    If the school goes nuts over seeing a picture of a gun then the administrators there have some state flags that will need redacting in books. Several state flags or state seals have images of guns or spears on them. The North Dakota state seal has a bow and arrows on it.

    • The North Dakota flag depicts an eagle clutching arrows in its talon, too. North Fargo H.S.’s own mascot appears to be some kind of ancient warrior, sporting a metal battle helmet.

      This is all on top of the district’s armed SRO program. Seems as though the district’s real quarrel isn’t with depictions of weapons, per se, but rather depictions that run counter to the “State holding a monopoly on the use of force” theme.

      Hey, teachers, leave them kids alone!

      • Can I get my pic with the flag of Mozambique in the background? You know, the place where “two to the heart, one to the head” was invented?

  9. I remember in high school in the late 1980s kids would wear t-shirts that read “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out” or “Join the Army, travel to exotic lands, meet interesting people, and kill them”, and nobody said anything. ROTC kids would haul their targets around campus and brag about their BB gun marksmanship.

    That was in addition to the Marlboro Man sweat pants or Joe Camel polo style shirts we all wore, even if you didn’t smoke. My personal favorite was the Corona beer “La playa mas fina” long sleeve shirt. Hell, I might even still have that in a closet someplace, right next to my “Frankie says relax” concert T, another artifact that wouldn’t pass muster today.

    The pussification of America continues unabated.

    • Our principal once paged me over the school intercom to borrow my pocket knife. Gone are the days.

      • Nice. Closest I came to anything similar was when I got busted n middle school for selling candy. Used to buy from the local wholesaler and sell at school at regular retail prices. Atomic fireballs, jolly ranchers, and laffy taffy! Oh my! Still can’t believe they let a monster like me just roam the streets.

        When I got busted by the Asst. Principal, he went to pull my file so he could call my parents. When he returned to call me into his office for that phone call, he found me at the office front desk selling packs of watermelon Bubbalicious to the Principal. Case dismissed.

    • In the front end of the 80s, at a school about 50 miles from a major metro, we brought our guns to school if we were going hunting at a friends afterwards. On the bus. If you could drive, there was a parking lot full of vehicles, most had gun racks, all had something loaded in the rack.

      Every guy carried a pocket knife and nobody called the cops when they busted some kid with pot.

      Halcyon days.

      • You just described southwest Oklahoma in the 70’s.

        Half of those beater pickups had a propane tank bolted to the truck bed.

        It was somewhat common for the family farm to have hanger.

        Less common (but nice) was an occasional WW-II T-6 trainer next to a Piper Cub…

    • Corona shirts…

      So, you clowns were the reason a cheap Mexican beer, which you had to put citrus in to make it drinkable, suddenly became an overpriced “import” beer.

    • I once had a reserve CO who was an assistant principal at a local high school. I remember him discussing civilian attitudes towards the military: “Some people think soldiers are all bloodthirsty warmongers, but the truth is not everybody is like me.”

      • Justice Scalio explained to 2 newbies (Sotomayor and Kagan?) how he carried a cased .22LR target rifle on the NY subway from home to school for his JROTC classes.

        Evidently he’s now got Kagan hooked on Sporting Clays.

    • “Kill ’em all and let God sort ’em out”

      Haha. I bought that same shirt around 8th grade at a surplus store. I managed to get out the door a few times with a jacket covering it to wear it to school until my Mom got wise and put a stop to it. She didn’t mind me keeping a 20-gauge model 870 on the wall rack in my room with full shell tube (labeled as ‘loaded’), a habit I started after I saw Red Dawn the first time, but the shirt apparently crossed a line of ‘decency’.

      Just to show how things have changed, in the 80’s I brought an antique shotgun to high school for an English class skit. The teacher and school disciplinarian approved it ahead of time. The school honcho just had me bring it by his office first to verify it was unloaded and I had no ammo with me, and then turned me loose in the halls. No drama at all.

    • One woman. fully clothed…

      *sigh*

      I thought you Europeans had that equality thing down by now? 🙂

      • That’s the teacher. In CZ students usually don’t make yearbooks. Highschool seniors take pictures of themselves and their teachers and school principal and arrange them (sometimes in funny way) on a board which they display in some store window for passers-by to see.
        Btw this is trade school and future gunsmiths.

  11. This school needs a nice civil rights violation law suit. The student in question did not violate any of the rules in question. This is arbitrary and capricious, and is beyond even their own insane rules. In short, I say sue them!

  12. I think creating “wimps” is the goal of all political correctness. Wimps are easy to control, lack initiative and boldness.

  15. “in sunnyslope, there was no hope.
    towards transcendence we did blindly grope.”
    fish karma.
    i agree with the above pussification comment, but the shirt and sweat examples offered were lame even back then.

  17. The entire U.S. public education system was designed to operate like this from day one, trends of the past 30 years are just a sign of rapid growth in the wrong direction. It’s not even about cultivating kids to be afraid of guns and gun owners anymore. Their goal is to turn anyone who rebels against the pop-culture/international socialist narrative into a pariah, and put pressure on the weak-willed kids to prevent them from ever fighting back a la current policies on “bullying” and “fighting.”

  19. What we are allowing the Public School System to do to our children is an abomination. When I was in Public High School we presented a shortened version of the play “The Life and Death of Sneaky Fitch”. A Western where each Act featured the central character shooting down an opponent in a Old-West Gun Fight. We used real guns with blank cartridges and no one thought anything about it. We went through a couple hundred blank rounds in rehearsal, performance and just fooling around. None of us performers was over eighteen.
    This show was done several times over the years because the Student Body loved it, and it was pretty humorous.
    Impossible today.

  21. “Weapons are banned on school property.”

    So that means pictures of weapons are banned on school property as well? This is completely bunk, and the first of his allegations to try to duly justify his poor reasoning.

    “Another rule prohibits publishing materials in school-sponsored media that violates federal or state law or promotes violence, terrorism or other illegal activity.”

    What laws did he violate? You fail to mention that. Secondly it’s interesting you think a picture of a gun is on par with promoting terrorism. Thirdly I fail to see how he’s promoting violence in the slightest… he’s simply holding a gun.

    “A third policy forbids clothing that promotes weapons.”

    Now you’re just being plain stupid. It’s an American flag shirt, and you’re being incredibly disrespectful in your implication that the flag promotes weaponry. It stands for a great many things, freedom and liberty, concepts you’ve probably lost any real understanding of. It doesn’t stand for any type of material object, but perhaps the protection of the right to keep and bear those sorts of objects, not the least of which are weapons.

    Pack your bags, renounce your citizenship and please exit the United States of America, Andy Dahlen, you are not welcome.

    • ‘Thirdly I fail to see how he’s promoting violence in the slightest… he’s simply holding a gun.’
      Don’t you see? #gunviolence.
      Gun–>violence! It’s so simple.
      Repeat the mantra “gunviolence” in the news, debates, all over media for couple of years and watch the sheep equate guns with violence.
      Propaganda. It works!

  22. Home school people. It is what it is. PC world-for the children. Glad my kids are out of high school…

  23. Reason 4: he looks like a tool

    Reasons 1-3 are silly though. But since when does everyone pick their own yearbook photos? In mine it was a big deal if you picked your own clothing for it…

  24. I’m from North Dakota and I got out of High School in 01′ and back then we couldnt have guns in our senior pics. This rule had been around for awhile and its not because a “liberal” is pushing it on one school.

  26. The other day was my kids’ catholic school open house day, and in walking through the building I could see art projects from many different grades. Of note:
    – A fifth grade project involving “people of the world” featured a kid-constructed cutout of a Buckingham Palace Guard complete with rifle.
    – A “greatest American” project featuring legendary war hero Audie Murphy.
    – A six grade project featuring kid-made replicas of prehistoric weapons.
    – Numerous other pictures of heros, soldiers, etc. featuring period relevant firearms.

    No mass killers have come out of that school, as far as I know.

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