School Board: Teens Free To Pose With Guns For Senior Portraits, Just As Long As They’re Tasteful

The senior portrait is a time to express yourself and what is most important to your life, and in a 6-0 vote on Monday the Broken Bow School District voted unanimously to approve the use of guns in senior portraits.

Did I pose with props in my senior photos? No, I’m not a tool.
Do I think these kids should have the right to pose with whatever they want? Absolutely, but it’ll still make look like tools.

From the Omaha/World-Herald:

Now graduating seniors attending a central Nebraska school district are free to pose with firearms for their school yearbook picture, as long as it’s done tastefully.

School board members voted 6-0 Monday to allow such photos in the Broken Bow Public Schools after parents pressed for the change, according to Superintendent Mark Sievering.

Hunting, skeet and trap are popular in the community and firearms are common, Sievering said. Broken Bow’s annual Nebraska One Box Pheasant Hunt draws hunters and celebrities from all over the country, he said.

“The board I believe felt they wanted to give students who are involved in those kinds of things the opportunity to take a senior picture with their hobby, with their sport, just like anybody with any other hobby or sport,” he said.

A district official said a check with a number of Nebraska districts found that about half of them allowed such photos.If posing with an item normally considered a weapon, such as a rifle, shotgun or knife, the student may not be brandishing the weapon or pointing it at the camera, the policy says.
The display must be “tasteful and appropriate.” For example, the policy says, a student “should not submit a photograph of game shot by the student if the animal is in obvious distress.”

School board member Matthew Haumont, a Nebraska hunter education instructor who has enjoyed the shooting sports all his life, said he wants the photos to be respectful of the shooting sports and not be offensive.

Sooooo no dead animals if the animal is in ‘obvious distress’ and the pictures of bowie knives and rifles need to be tasteful? Got it.

Whatever happened to the 1980’s when senior portraits only consisted of a tuxedo and some sort of lightning feature backdrop? Not to say that those were better, I’m just wondering whatever happened to that option. Not that I was a teen in the 80’s, or am a teen now, I’m just really into having a shit ton of options.

Hat tip to MotherJones for finding the story.

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