Proving that rampant political correctness regarding toy guns isn’t the sole province of daycare centers and elementary schools, a St. Louis University student prompted a campus-wide lockdown on Wednesday after he was spotted carrying … a rubber-band gun.
The student, an engineering major who had been assigned to build the gun for his Engineering Manufacturing Procedures class, was carrying his creation back to his dorm when another student spotted him and became alarmed. The resulting report of a man in a black hoodie entering a residence hall with a gun, along with rapidly spreading rumors of shots having been fired, prompted an order to “shelter in place” and a search for a possible shooting suspect. When located by law enforcement, the “suspect”—who as it turns out was guilty of nothing more than completing his coursework—readily cooperated with authorities, who questioned him and examined both the “gun” and his dorm room.
As a result of the fiasco, the school asked all students to bring the toy guns in closed containers to a university office, where they will be destroyed. “This is the first time toy guns have been made in this class, and it will be the last,” a spokesman said.
