DM – A mother is furious with her daughter’s school after she was punished for taking a ‘gun’ made out of paper to school. Dianna Kelly, of south Philadelphia, says staff at D.Newlin Fell School over-reacted when fifth-grader Melody Valentin was noticed taking it out of her pocket by another pupil. She was scolded in front of the class, threatened with the police being called and even searched with other children watching the whole time, reported Fox 29. Melody was given the folded piece of paper by her grandfather the day before and claims she only got it out to throw away as she had forgotten it was in her pocket. A boy saw the crudely-folded piece of paper and called staff. ‘He yelled at me and said I shouldn’t have brought the gun to school and I kept telling him it was a paper gun but he wouldn’t listen,’ Melody said. She added that her classmates had taunted her, calling her a ‘murderer’. Ms Kelly says he daughter was punished so severely she has since been suffering from terrifying dreams. She said: ‘I’m waking up at 3am and my daughter is in the bathroom crying. She’s saying “I’m having nightmares, I’m having dreams about him (a school staff member) chasing me down the street”. ‘Why did he threaten my daughter? Why did he stand over my daughter and tell her that he should call the cops on her. Why did he try to scare her?’

Yeah, well, I’m sorry Melody but you understand. Can’t be taking any chances with guns in today’s political climate, no matter how flat and paper-y yours may be. Gotta take all of these matters seriously. NOW it’s only a paper gun, but if we let this slide paper guns will turn into paperCLIP guns and then the next thing you know we’ll have a mass semi-automatic stapler shooting incident in a Philadelphia school and everyone will be wondering where the administrators are. Well no need to worry, parents. They’ve got their eyes on the situation.

PS – The rest of her class calling her a ‘murderer’ is hilarious any way you slice it.