A Tennessee 10-year-old was expelled from school for a full year after he pointed his finger in the shape of a gun and made mock "machine gun" noises, according to a ProPublica investigation.
The boy was expelled as part of a "zero tolerance" law in Tennessee that mandates any student who makes a threat of "mass violence" be expelled for at least one year. While the law, originally signed in 2023—following a shooting by a former student at a private school in Nashville—was recently amended to direct schools to expel students only for "valid" threats, the provisions of the law are still vague, and schools have considerable enforcement leeway.
