I would like for
you to meet Cole Withrow. In addition to being an Eagle Scout, Cole is an honors student and high school senior in Johnston County North Carolina … at least he was until recently.
Now, he is charged with a felony, expelled from school weeks before graduation, and sees his college plans crumbling since he will not be allowed to graduate.
All of the hard work he has put into becoming a successful member of society is threatened.
Cole is the epitome of what I am talking about when I say that gun control does nothing more than victimize the innocent.
So what did Cole do to deserve a virtual death penalty on his future? Did he kill someone in cold blood? Did he blow up a building?
No … it was far worse than that (at least in the viewpoint of modern academia) … he went skeet shooting and forgot to remove his shotgun from the vehicle before going to school.
Well … perhaps he was showing the gun around at school or handling it? Nope. Once Cole realized what he had inadvertently done, he secured the shotgun and phoned his mother to come and get the vehicle.
But he was overheard by a school employee who promptly called the police.
The rest, as they say, is simply a matter of zero-tolerance …. no intent required.
To illustrate the hypocrisy even further, it has been noted that two years ago, Cole’s assistant Principal Catherine Bennett brought a gun in her car onto school campus. To make matters worse, her car was being worked on by the auto mechanics class and the gun was found by students who handed it around before hiding it under the fender of the car.
So Cole will be joining Bennett in prison? Nope. Bennett did not face criminal charges because she said that she did not know the gun was in the car.
School officials claim that this is because the law is different where students and teachers are concerned. Now … I have not yet reviewed the statutes but a general rule of constitutional law is that differing classes of citizens may not be subject to differing punishments for the same criminal act.
Any objective observer will immediately see that this whole thing stinks of hypocrisy, double standards, and zero tolerance ran amuck. Ultimately, it all goes back to the true aim of gun control … to make people so afraid of the consequences of even inadvertent acts that they will simply give up their rights rather than attempt to comply. It is intended to have a very chilling effect indeed.
When next you hear a Democrat call for ‘reasonable restrictions’ think of Cole and what he and his family have lost.
So what can you do for Cole?
- Contact the Johnston County School Board and let them know what you think of their actions.
- Contact the Johnston County DA Susan Doyle via email [email protected] or telephone (919) 209-5521 and ask her to immediately drop the charges against Cole.
- Sign this petition that is going to the School Board.
- Sign this petition to the Governor.
- Keep up with the #FreeCole campaign at their Facebook page.
The ‘Innocent Victims of Gun Control‘ series of articles details the effects of gun control policies on law abiding citizens and exposes the lie that gun control is only aimed at criminals.
Zero tolerance is nothing but rules put in place by people lacking common sense and enforced by those lacking that same quality. Very similar to the arbitrary disqualifications that one would find in a NICS background check. Check out the new edition DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders). Almost every emotion could be classified as a mental illness. Nice that the government has (or will have) such ready access to medications and diagnoses’ via Obamacare.
Precisely why I’m so against this “background check” nonsense! They can deny the right to gun ownership to anyone who has talked to their family doctor about being down or having stress or frustration issues. Psychology is being used as a tool and a weapon by the government to control people far more than it’s being used to help those who genuinely need help.
Have done as you suggest – contacted all save Facebook and will forward to all of my friends. This is INTOLERABLE !
Rome burns around this young man’s future will Nero fiddles @*%X$#
I will never understand how we allowed any law to be enacted that can make someone a felon without ANY criminal or malicious intent whatsoever.
Smoking is not allowed on school property, imagine the outrage if it were a FELONY to leave a pack of cigarettes in your car while you drove to school and parked in the parking lot.
The gun-grabbers are so fond of recalling Scalia’s fleeting footnote in Heller that basically says they were not addressing “presumably lawful” restrictions on guns.
This would be an excellent case to challenge what is “reasonable”. Clearly this is NOT reasonable, and I think we could get 5 justices to agree.
not with the bought-off Obamabitches we have on the SCOTUS today!!
Pingback: Zero Tolerance Ruins the Life of a Good Kid… Again | The Liberty Zone
This is painfully sick and twisted. I hope this story goes viral. I’m absolutely disgusted by it all.
I hope you don’t mind that I reblogged this.
http://thelibertyzone.wordpress.com/2013/05/02/zero-tolerance-ruins-the-life-of-a-good-kid-again/
Zero tolerance = zero common sense
Dead on the mark.
If worse comes to worse, can he demand a jury trial? Only takes one to nullify.
Hopefully this travisty will never get that far.
Terrible situation. I’ve called Ms. Doyle. As an aside: The correct name of the county is “Johnston”, not “Johnson.” I used to be a resident.
Corrected. Thanks. 🙂
Thank God we have gun free school zones to protect our children from nut jobs like this. /sarcasm
Im actually glad this happened, and I hope the charges remain, and this case gets appealed all the way to the supreme court so they can overturn this unconstitutional law
Jerry Falwell Jr. offered this guy a full ride to LU and to pay for his schooling to finish up his high school diploma if the high school did not allow him back. http://radio.foxnews.com/toddstarnes/top-stories/liberty-univ-offers-scholarship-to-eagle-scout-facing-gun-charges.html
Actually, recent stories now indicate that the school has backed off a little bit and is allowing the boy to graduate with his class, through enrollment in “alternative school” classes. http://www.wral.com/news/local/video/12406513/#/vid12406513
This boy in my opinion is innocent, and followed the the law accordingly, he should not be punished for being an upfront and honest young man. No harm no foul.
“…he should not be punished for being an upfront and honest young man.”
“Teen who brought guns to school admits he lied, pleads guilty”:
http://www.wral.com/teen-who-brough-guns-to-school-admits-he-lied-pleads-guilty/12453823/
Overall fear of guns seem to be based on the ignorance of the person(s) knowledge. A major concern is the school employee calling the police right off the bat seems to be an act of ignorance. Asking the young man what’s going on, taking the matter to the principle and letting the administration ask and see what happened. This coming from and education center really concerns me on the overall development of minds of the future. If seems like the education system is telling everyone “hey all guilty until proven innocent.”, “everyone will do something stupid so let’s react with straight emotion instead of thinking about the situation”.
I did the exact same thing in HS. When shooting with friends, forgot my AR was in the trunk. When I remembered, I immediately moved my car off school property and called my dad to come grab the rifle. School resource officer saw me leaving and asked what I was doing when I came back. I told her straight up and she just said, don’t do it again. That was the end of it. This crap is ridiculous.
Zero tolerance is a recent invention to punish those innocent of any ill intent.
Zero tolerance assures no one gets shot at school.
If you were being sarcastic, you should have so indicated.
If serious – please explain how any rule or new law will magically envelope innocents in a protective force field. Good people obey laws – criminals do not.
Zero tolerance makes zero sense.
does it really? have you seen the news lately?
when was the last time somebody who commited a crime submitted to a background check? do you think these people got a hold of these guns legally? NO…criminals will always get guns.. no unconstitutional law will ever stop criminals, they will only hurt law abiding citizens who try to practice their 2nd amendment right.
Bill, how did zero tolerance protect the people at Newtown?
They say ignorance is bliss. So I’m guessing that the people on this school board
must be in heaven. Because if they really knew this student they would have spoken
to him and his parents and made sure that this unfortunate incident did not
happen again. and again they should have known that this was an honest mistake,
and the employee heard him talking to his mom and telling her to come and pick up
his car. But did he relay that information to the school probably not. Just saying.
http://www.wral.com/teen-who-brough-guns-to-school-admits-he-lied-pleads-guilty/12453823/
The kid lied about not knowing they were there. once again the media on both sides skewed the issue to meet their agenda.
Thanks John!
Everyone seemed to jump to conclussions on this one! That’s what happens when you react before you know all the facts. I think a retraction of this is article or at least an explanation of the facts is updated on this site. If you claim to be the ones on the sides of justice you must admit when you’re wrong as well, and not just give half truths to just promote your side of things. The truth of the matter is that the kid should have never brought the guns to school, Period! This “little mistake”, could have become a big one, and then we would have been hearing guns don’t kill people, people kill people. This also goes to show you that you have to be careful where you get your news, because it can easily be slanted. It also can totally ruin a site’s credibility as an information source. First article I read on site, and first article called out by a poster to the comment section. OUCH!
Forget the media response and the knee jerk reactions.
The crux of the matter remains the same. There is NO good reason to restrict/penalize otherwise law abiding people from doing what this young man did.
GFSZ accomplish what? Sheessh.
In Bristol, Rhode Island HS (1965) I took a 12ga. to shop class to remake a stock for it. Carried it in and out of class every day till it was done. No one said a word, or even looked twice. Still have the gun.
This has nothing to do with reasonable gun control and everything to do with lack of poor judgement on the part of school administration. The fact that the student actually knew the guns were there all along doesn’t change things because he tried in good faith to remedy the situation. I’m actually no fan of open carry, but this student wasn’t exactly walking around in school with the gun either. To me, reasonable gun control does *not* mean banning skeet shooting, and I think that ought to inform the discussion.
Another example of why Zero-tolerance is INTOLERANCE! So people, stop being intolerable bastards!
This is a bunch of bs that boy snds like an excellent young man and I can not believe wat I’m reading this is an outrage the people that are prosecuting him needs a good old fashion belt to there ass as they probly had stupid parents that did not whip them growing up to teach them right from wrong n mess n up this young mans future is very wrong u want my gun s u can pull them outa my cold dead hand s good luck with that ever 1 in my house is well train to defend them selves with hands and weapons of any kind gun control my ass the only way to stop bad people with guns is for every good person like this young man that had been shooting clay s n forgot to take out his gun b 4 go n back to school if there would ve been a school shooting there and he knew he could have got to that shot gun me Eagle Scout would ve more than likely saved lives there but yaw want to persecute him good job jake ass / dum very dum people let that fine young man go n live his life to b a grate productive member of society
Interesting way of putting that.
Security video from the school shows Withrow never went to his truck. He purchased a drink from a concession area and was talking to other students at the time he claimed to be in the parking lot.
It would have been impossible for Withrow not to know the guns were in the vehicle. He said the end of the barrel of one of the guns was near the gas pedal.
“I was not truthful…I did in fact know that the two shotguns were in my truck on school property. I did not mean to hurt anyone by my actions,” Cole said in a later statement, after being caught lying.
A good person who made an honest mistake. Let him graduate.
This is two years old now. Wonder how it all worked out.