Wade Gelinas banned yearbook photo (courtesy usatoday.com)

“A Maine student will not be allowed to use his preferred photo for the high school yearbook [above], because it depicts him holding a gun,” usatoday.com reports. “Wade Gelinas, a senior at Bonny Eagle High School, said hunting is a family tradition for him and wanted his yearbook photo to be one of him holding his shotgun. ‘It’s just my sport. It’s just what I do. I don’t play football. I don’t play basketball. I just hunt.'” Yes but . . .

Turns out no one thought Bonny Eagle High was a going to publish his preferred photograph.

Principal Lori Napolitano said the school’s code of conduct prevents students from bringing weapons to school, or wearing clothes or other items that depict weapons.

“Drugs, alcohol, weapons, tobacco are not allowed at school, and you cannot wear clothing that has pictures of weapons on it,” said Napolitano. “We just want to draw the line at weapons of any kind being in the picture and that way we’re not trying to pass judgment on which ones are promoting violence or which ones aren’t.”

Photographer Kelly Roy said she has taken photos of students before with bows and arrows, sports equipment, musical instruments, or even their cars, but she said she did not think the school would let him use this photo.

“I figured there’d be no way they’d let him put it in the yearbook,” said Roy.

Napolitano said students have tried to use photos in the past that have them holding weapons, and they have always said no.

What would it take to change the policy? Gun normalization. When’s that gonna happen? Now there’s a question . . .

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86 COMMENTS

  1. The beard violates the school dress code? Other than that, I’m at a loss.

    But then I was raised in a time when folks had guns at school. And nobody got shot.

    • The beard violates something, that’s for sure.

      I’ll give the Amish a pass, but he doesn’t look Amish.

    • I was too and I’m only 33. Guns and knives at school were a given and no one ever got shot or stabbed.

      That all changed after Columbine.

  2. Thats what is wrong with America and our society, our education system is no longer about education. Is all about indoctrination. Socialism and leftiest to the core.
    JV.

    • You hit the nail on the head JV. I’m 47 years old and when I was in high school and college we shot 22 rifles as PART OF THE CLASS. If you didn’t then you wouldn’t pass. It is no longer about education it is about liberal indoctrination. It started going downhill when they started changing the history books. When I was in school we were taught allot about the revolutionary war, civi war, both world wars and why the American way of democracy is so great. Its a disgrace now.

      • It’s annoying isn’t it, now we have all this talk about ethnic cleansing/genocide of indigeneous folks and slavery and Jim Crow and racism and civil rights and womens rights and gay folks rights etc, THATS not what history is meant to be, it should celebrate and cheerlead America at home and of course every country we attack is a glorious instance of defending America! : D And you complain about indoctrination, your mythological view of America is the indoctrination, decent folks who really appreciate America and want to make it better prefer to deal honestly with American history. Naturally you prefer to ignore cutting off black folks balls and sticking them in their mouth and setting them on fire and hanging them for infringing Southern-style Apartheid, ignore arbitrarily putting Japanese-Americans and Arab-Americans in cages, assassinating/murdering folks by remote control all over the world with no evidence, torturing folks with no evidence and on and on… your delusional rah-rah version of US history is a crucial backdrop to electing an ignorant bullying jerk to the presidency, all the dumb bigots like you have made us the laughing stock of the world!

        • Prof. You and you alone are why we have Trump in the whitehouse. And you will be the reason he rides 8 years and appoints more bigots to the supreme court.

          Thanks.

        • Prof, Can you please tell me what political party in the south those folks belonged to that did all of these atrocities to the Blacks? Can you kindly tell me what political party Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who was the commander in chief and ordered Japanese-Americans into internment camps was a member of? They have one thing in common they were democrats

        • Every person must be held accountable for the decisions her or she makes. No matter what the decisions, each of us must be able to enjoy the results thereof, good or bad. Smart people learn from their mistakes and make better decisions in the future. Thus, the college of hard knocks.

          Lazy people who have never had or who have lost the need to succeed make poor choices that bring negative effects to their lives and then give up and do not continue to try to succeed at their original task via another route. They inadvertently become dependent on government to pick them up, dust them off and kill their boo boos and make them feel better.

          Unless you haven’t noticed, the Constitution does not provide protection for people that have become dependent on government for their every need. It provides for a people that is strong, assertive, hard working, patriotic, moral, religious, and dedicated to managing government and the people they select to be their voices in managing our country. Do you do your part in managing those people that represent your concerns while managing government for us all? Have you read, and, do you understand the text of: the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the U.S. Constitution?

          I, somehow doubt that you have read them and that you understand what you have read. We are all guaranteed the right to express our opinions in whatever manner that we choose, by the First Amendment. No cushions for protecting people from hearing what they find offensive are provided for anyone. Any limitation on what people say and where they can speak freely are unconstitutional. We do not have to stand by and listen to things we don’t like hearing. We are free to stand up and move away. Thus, allowing the speaker his freedom of speech and your freedom not to listen. Just as the system is supposed to work.

          Political correctness wants to take away any form of speech that offends a particular group, or groups on the grounds that they may be offended by what they hear. Not good because denying the unregulated freedom to speak ones mind openly and freely is repression of the kind the Framers worked diligently to insure citizens of the United States of America would not have to endure tyranny at the hands of government with absolute powers over them.

          Freedom to speak whatever is on your mind permits public information disclosing actions of those in government that are not in accordance with expected allegiance and patriotism bounds established by the Constitution, the Supreme law of our land from which all other laws gain their authority.

          Freedom of speech goes hand in hand with freedom of the press which enables the press to publish, openly and freely, information on activities of government and those entrusted with the authority to speak for the people that elected them, their constituents.

          The Second Amendment is provided to insure that American citizens can protect themselves from tyranny at the hands of those posing as representatives of the people for management of government affairs for the benefit of the people and of the United States. The people of the United States are responsible for managing their government and the people chosen to speak for them at election time.

          Those that claim that they have nothing to do with government and don’t vote because their little vote isn’t going to change anything, have drunken the Kool-Aid resulting from about four decades of propaganda from our shadow government telling us that we don’t matter, that our individual voices are meaningless. HOW Stupid can people be that know how to read and write; as dumb as our degraded public school systems can make them. IF you have been paying attention for the last four decades you cannot have ignored the fact that the graduates of high schools today cannot hold a candle to graduates from 30 – 40 years ago.

          I bet you can guess the qualifications of today’s teachers. Yep, you’re right, they are products of our dumbed down schools system and the dumbed down curricula being taught. How can this be, you might ask? It can be because American citizens have had their heads buried in the ground refusing to speak up and put an end to government regulation of schools and subject matter being taught as well as how it is taught.

          The degradation of education to the point where graduates have become the perfect workers needed for a Socialist like state which needs workers that will do what they are told without questioning anything they are told or asked to do. If they are told that they must never say or do, or allow anyone else to say or do anything that upsets someone else. When this state is reached we have political correctness. Political correctness is killing our country.

          Political correctness has caused the boy in the picture to lose his natural right to pursue happiness in the fashion he has chosen; with his shotgun in his hand while wearing his hunting shirt. To those that think his picture should not be allowed, go to hell!

          Those of you that know that he should be allowed to have the picture of his choice in his year book; get on the phone and raise all get out with the school board as well as your state Senators and Representatives demanding that this wrong be righted and demand that no such politically correct incidents be permitted in your state. This, my friends, is how you make your voice heard. Do so!!

        • C.S. Clearly it was your side, the worst of America, the ignorant bullies who pretend racism and sexism and homophobia dont exist, and that every instance of US state terror against nearly defenseless folks in Iraq or Yemen or Grenada and on and on is some heroic act, every time the US military attacks and slaughters nearly defenseless folks in their home, on your side this is the US defending itself! So go and lick John Birch’s bottom next time you open your mouth, OK! : D

        • How intolerant is Tom? So intolerant that when I advocate looking honestly at US history warts and all in order to make America better, that that is the attitude of people like me who really appreciate America, Tom can only hear this as me saying that America “sucks”! Tom’s intolerance rivals his stupidity!

        • And Tom is so dumb he doesnt realize that his post telling me to leave America is evidence that HE should leave America. You see Tom dissent is a quintessentially American value, decent Americans dont tell dissenters to get the fawk out. Toms ignorant bullying attitude is in harmony with how folks in totalitarian societies feel/think, if anyone criticizes the party line then they are exiled. So based on this mentality of yours Tom YOU are the on who should get the fawk out of my country, you dont appreciate or deserve it you ignorant bully : D

          Feel free to leave America professor, if you think it sucks so much.

        • Tec’s Dad is a child with an am radio mentality whose hobby is smearing the Democratic Party.
          Heres two answers to your silly post: 1.) Those Southern racists who terrorized and brutalized black folks where of course not democrats, their behavior was largely motivated of course by denying democracy and political power to black folks. Likewise the totalitarian mentality that randomly herded Japanese-Americans into camps of course was the antithesis of democracy. What the perpetrators have in common is that they are the worst of America, ignorant bullies like you and our president.
          2.) Racist Southerners flocked to the Democratic party until LBJ betrayed them signing the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting Rights Act, when the Southern racists switched their allegiance to the Republic : ) party which to this day enjoys the hearty support of racists across the country. You see outside of your childish am radio echo chamber it is region not party that is the meaningful measure(and it should tell you something that you have to go back several decades to try and smear folks, that you think what a completely different party did so long ago tells us anything about that party today) You have no idea how dumb your claim is because you are really one of the dumbest folks on earth. Lilkewise the shameful xenophobia against Japanese-Americans occurred under a Democratic president, while the disgraceful xenophobia against Arab-Americans(which you typically dishonestly omitted from your response, further indication of what a silly dishonest am radio child you are : D)occurred under a Republic : ) president. Again party is not the meaningful measure, what these folks have in common is xenophobia and intolerance and ignorance and bullying, the worst of America like you and the president.

      • And lets get this straight, shooting a deer with a rifle is not a sport, and blasting birds to smithereens with a shotgun is certainly not a sport, and neither should be fun unless youre an asswipe like yall. A sport involves a challenge where both sides stand a chance to win/lose. Hunting is a slaughter, its not fun for the animals to be killed, and its only fun for small ugly boy/men to kill them. Now if the ETs teach the animals to shoot back, or cloak them so they can sneak up and bite your small balls off, THAT might be a sport. Or you could try wrestling a bear, maybe give yourself a couple swords, that might be a sport, where you both have a chance to kill/die.
        And please dont misunderstand me, in America this crap is legal and many if not most folks consider it legitimate recreation (another stain on our national honor not addressed in history class) and I dont wanna take away your precious guns or your right to slaughter animals, I just want you to hear it at least one time that you unwittingly reveal how sad and sick you are by killing animals for fun.

        • I’m sure you would have no problem with the government shooting political dissenters. Please do not try to dictate what I choose to consume for food.

        • Of course hunting is a sport — if it wasn’t, they’d call it “shopping”. It takes skill and training and patience, and there’s no guarantee of “winning”. The deer mostly win; the game management people set it up that way, though a fair percentage of hunters manage to win as well. Many hunters who “lose” do indeed lose because the hit to the food budget is huge.

          “Blasting birds to smithereens”? That would be foolish; the point is to get a meal or two, not make airborne hash.

          And even were hunting not a sport, it should still be fun, like any other chore. If you don’t have fun at your chores, you’re living wrong.

        • Roymond I’m sending you a no-hard-feelings gift of the latest in hunter chic, a special hunting cap with antlers mounted on top, wear that the next time out and maybe dimwitted folks like you will see the difference between a hunter losing and a draw (which is what you described when neither side is killed). I’m sorry you refuse to acknowledge the well-known definition of sport I explained, in any other context you would, you certainly wouldnt call it a sport for example if you got in the ring with Mike Tyson or Chuck Norris. But as least as far as whether killing animals with weapons is fun, we’ve made ourselves clear, so enjoy yourself asswipe : D

        • sorry I should have said if Mike Tyson or Chuck Norris snuck up on you and attacked you unawares, you would never call that a sport and claim that they lost if by some miracle you managed to run away… you are really too dumb to be real, donkeys like you are ruining the country putting in this Jackball-in-Chief Chump

        • It’s always animal lovers like you who squeal about levelling the playing field. Then a gal posts video of her husband hunting bear with pointy stick and you animal lovers go ape shit. So much hate follows that Under Armor fires her. I don’t even hunt, but that’s funny.

          Humans are apex predators. We don’t grow long teeth or sharp claws. We have brains (some of us, not talking about you) and crafty hands that we use to create our weapons.
          Next you will demand to shorten lion’s fangs and claws. Now go and eat your prepackaged meat, harvested while no one had any fun, guaranteed. Or stuff yourself with grass on pasture like a good sheep.

    • Nonsense, John V. I am an admitted extremely liberal person who is more conservative than the conservatives on the Second Amendment (NO restrictions on the right to keep and bear arms are allowed by the Constitution in my opinion) but I have to say that a lot of the teachers in my school in rural Maryland were conservative compared to my parents who are liberal but not what I would call uber-liberal like me.

      From volunteering at local schools for various things I have to say that the whole “The teachers are liberal and the schools are liberal indoctrination centers is a big old lie.”

    • The second you make something public compulsory (or near to it) it WILL lead to socialist indoctrination. Homeschool for liberty.

      • You dont even know what socialism is, you borrowed this from am radio to slur everyone/everything that isnt as retrograde and stupid as you and yours. You imagine it makes you sound educated, like your brethren who smear folks as “cultural Marxists”, when really you arent saying anything, you may as well say they are “uncool” or “double-plus ungood”, it would have the same substance, namely none.

        For your information the US military is socialist, as are the top defense contractors, the National Guard, the Coast Guard, Telecommunications giants, railroads, electric companies and many other aspects of the American political economy… but you dont know what political economy is either, you are hopelessly ignorant, a small person who listens to am radio in search of words and phrases to conceal how little you know, words like “terorrist” and phrases like “politically correct”.

        If you dont want to be an ignorant asswipe the rest of your life then turn off am radio and study a comparative political systems introductory text and ask me to do you the favor of tutoring you here… : D

        • @Professor Manque: You have 18 comments on this site that I can find, and you do not go a single one without attacking another commenter. It’s fine that you disagree with most people here; that’s what discussions are for. But if you can’t do it without repeatedly calling people names, as you have done in every single comment you’ve posted, you are not welcome. This is your only warning.

  4. What’s wrong with this photo? The US Department of misEducation and 90+ years of progressive-left indoctrination, that’s what.

    The education establishment has been owned and operated entirely by and for international Marxism since the 1970s. Your teachers and mine may not have been progressive drones when we were in school in the ’70s and ’80s or even maybe the ’90s, but that’s mostly due to the remaining old-timers who came up in a system that hadn’t been entirely taken over.

    By the mid-’90s, it was pretty much over. Education degrees produced leftists taught entirely by leftists in leftist institutions, so completely steeped in multiculti progressive crap they can’t see or think anything else. The few who haven’t been fully brainwashed keep their heads down to keep their lives and livelihoods intact.

    Good effort, kid, but you never had a chance and everybody but you knew it. Once you’re outside the machine, maybe you can try again. They don’t own everything yet, thank God.

  5. There is no extension tube. What was he thinking? I would at least try to explain to hon the potentially life endangering shortage of shells.

  6. I think it’s a nice picture, not for the gun but just because. I miss being out in the wilderness, gave it all up when I moved to the city.

  7. He’s not at school with a gun. its a picture of hum holding a gun off school grounds. The policies the principal is referring to have absolutely nothing to do with with pictures in a yearbook. Not even remotely. They are completely and utterly unrelated.

  8. What’s wrong?!? He’s not HOME schooled. Freakin’ leftards…and in Maine no less.

  9. The photog seems to think that while a bow and arrow is ok a shotgun isn’t because it’s a weapon? Uh…a bow and arrow is a weapon! Doesn’t anyone remember Agincourt?

    • There’s a difference between respecting a reasonable policy and acquiescing to an unreasonable one without complaint. I get sick of people who act like their brains reside inside a rule book instead of between their ears. It’s their job to recognize situations the rules weren’t designed to cover and handle them appropriately.

  13. What’s wrong with that picture? Three things.

    First, the gun isn’t an AR.

    Second, there’s no bump-fire stock.

    Third, the kid is an American, not a Commie douchebag like his teachers and school administrators.

    Those who can, do. Those who can’t, teach. Those who can’t teach, teach gym. Those who can’t teach gym, administrate.

    • Ralph

      Now that you mention the bump fire stock, I wonder if the school would complain, or even notice if the kid held just a bump fire stock, no AR-15 attached, but just the bump stock for his senior picture?

  14. Weakness (not only pride) comes before the fall.

    And how far we’ve come. We were once a nation of riflemen (and women). Ready to defend our communities and liberty from any threat. With no more frontier, we have cast off the frontiersman.

    A nation of domesticated cattle, nothing less. Weak. Fearful. Dependent.

    I pity them, for fear is the passion of slaves.

    • It depends on his genes. I once chided a fellow college senior for not shaving at least once a week. He indignantly told me he had been growing a beard for six months.

    • I knew a guy in high school that had to shave twice a day…and he was 15-17 at the time…

  16. This is stuff the NRA & GOA should take to court and sue over. Gotta hit the plutocrats where it hurts most: their budgets.

  18. If it’s a rule it’s a rule. I don’t like it but I’m pretty sure he knew going in this wouldn’t pass muster. Nice publicity stunt for him though. I’m just too worried about important stuff to give too much of a d@#n about this. Sometimes you’re the ball, sometimes you’re the bat!

  19. The ONLY thing wrong with that picture is that FLAME DELETED had a say in whether or not it was published.

    • You’re absolutely right – the platoon Sergeant me was about to jump down his throat for not wearing ear and eyepro.

      • We don’t see the muzzle so he could be using his dad’s Salvo 12. Doesn’t excuse the lack of eye protection though.

  23. I’d say it could use a little fill flash or better lighting on his face. Otherwise, looks like a great environmental portrait.

  24. That policy is definitely indoctrination and not education. For starters, it’s indoctrination that free speech isn’t actually a right, but a privilege.

    When I was in high school there were rifles in racks in pickups driven by both students and faculty/staff. And we fought a free speech battle over the dress code, and won. How did we win? Because the jocks and the nerds and the offbeat types all agreed and stood together.

    Here we see the “educators” playing divide and conquer with students: they’ve exalted one segment of the student body — the one that fears guns — and taught them to regard others as lesser. It’s so authoritarian and anti-American it’s nauseating.

  25. I can guaran-frickin’-tee that whenever there’s a piece on some teenage girl who gets a detention or has her yearbook photo rejected for exposing her scandalous shoulders, at least half of you are leaving comments about sluts and liberals and snowflakes, because the rules are the rules are the rules when it comes to regulating girls’ appearances.

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  27. My high school year book had a photo of a Chihuahua being threatened with a revolver demanding that you buy the yearbook.
    It was supposed to be funny and it was. 1979 in southern Louisiana. We all had rifles in our cars during hunting season.

    My have we fallen.

    • I too graduated in 1979, had a Jeep J-10 pickup and used to keep a Remington 870 in a scabbard behind the seat, used to go hunting before school or after school depending on the season…I remember going to the local YMCA to lift weights and after school and having to wait for the smallbore rifle team to finish up, as they shared a common area. Today, no more rifle team, SWAT would be called if someone thought they heard there was a shotgun in a vehicle… this is all due to societal rot..

      • I also graduated in 1979 in Ohio. Many of us also went hunting before, and for some, after school, but since I had practice after school all year the only way that I went hunting after school was to play hooky from practice, which did happen

        I also remember in 7th and 8th grade, when a few kids would bring their single shot shotguns on the school bus because we all had to get up in front of the entire English class and give an oral report on anything that we wanted to as long as we had a visual to show the class.some
        Some kids would do their report on gun safety, and proper gun cleaning/maintenance, all of this without anyone getting flagged by a barrel.
        The single shot shotguns were broke open, and carried muzzle down, in the crook of the arm, and single shot .22s were always carried muzzle down. I started my kids out with BB guns and when my kids were right around five years old I would take them behind my house and let them shoot a Browning Buckmark pistol, with me being right behind them and damnn near breathing into their left ear

        I lived, and still do live in a rural area, but I didn’t move down to my present, rural location until I was 13 years old, and before I moved down here where I am at I grew up in Akron.
        Akron and my rural area are definitely two different worlds, but while growing up in Akron, my dad had plenty of guns, and my dad taught us gun safety, cleaning, and at 8 years old he started teaching me how to reload shotgun, rifle, and pistol rounds and then he left us.
        It turned out that me and my brother would only see dear old dad about three or four more times within the next 25 years.

        Thank God my mom married a great guy that removed us from that concrete cesspool called a city and moved us down to God’s Country haaaa

        Sorry, I had to throw that in as a way to coax the good people to move from the cities if at all possible but there is a caveat and that is that country living isn’t all laid back and full of retards, like the progressive “Commiecrats” wants the city dwellers, and all of America’s gullible to think it is

  28. Wow, If the school district receives any type of federal, state, county, city funding, It’ a PUBLIC SCHOOL, and this is an obvious 1st amendment violation.

    What has happened to America. My grade school had a shooting range in the basement. No one got shot, It was an educational class in proper gun safety and marksmanship.

    More people are killed in cars, are they restricting students submitting a photo standing next to a car?

    The liberals are totally unhinged!

  29. The problem with this pic is he is holding what appears to be a freedom group remington 870 express. It is a huge fail.

  30. Two problems:

    1. The Amish Beard.
    2. Barrel pointed horizontally forward at below waist level.

    Otherwise, I’m good with this.

  35. @Professor Manque–

    Your definition of sport is an off-beat one. Sport is usually defined as a passtime requiring physical exertion that is governed by a set of rules or customs; it may be but does not require competition.

    Thus mountaineering is a sport, even though it is a cooperative activity, and gold is a sport even if I never play against anyone else.

    So by the traditional definition, hunting is in fact a sport.

    As for getting in the ring with someone a lot more skilled than I, of course it’s a sport. I got my butt handed to me regularly in Tae Kwon Do by people far more skilled, but that didn’t make it not a sport, it just made it painful and frustrating. If your definition held, then the top NBA team playing against a local high school team wouldn’t count as sport, but it certainly does.

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