In 2003, Alex Jones discussed the case of Alan Newsom, a middle school student who was not allowed to wear an NRA t-shirt with firearms silhouettes and "NRA Sports Shooting Camp" text. A federal judge ruled that he could wear other NRA shirts but not this one until his lawsuit against the school system is resolved. The judge believed Alan would likely win, as the lawsuit names the school board members, superintendent, and principal. Alan's father, Fred Newsom, appeared on the show and mentioned that his son faced bullying for standing up for his beliefs by wearing the NRA shirt.
| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| The Genesis Communications Radio Network proudly presents the Alex Jones Show. | |
| Because there's a war on for your mind. | |
| Alright, so much has been happening today that I did something I do about once a year. | |
| I forgot we got a guest on this hour, we just never got a hold of him. | |
| He's joining us now. | |
| I know we have loaded phones. | |
| Before the hour ends, I'll get to everybody that's holding, Spencer and Jesse and Michael and Robert and many others. | |
| Right now, we're joined by Fred Newsom, the father of a young man who did nothing wrong but was attacked basically by the Thought Police, the political police that we now seem to have in this country. | |
| This is out of Charlottesville, Virginia, and it says a county middle school student will not be allowed to wear his National Rifle Association t-shirt to school while his lawsuit against the school system is pending. | |
| A federal judge has ruled. | |
| District Judge Norman K. Moons wrote in his decision handed down on Tuesday that Jack | |
| U.S. | |
| I don't think so. | |
| So now the First Amendment's violent. | |
| Oh, I see. | |
| The shirt bears silhouettes of gunmen and the words NRA Sports Shooting Camp. | |
| The middle school student has been allowed to wear other NRA shirts, Moon said. | |
| So understand that 20 years ago, 40 years ago, when the country was free, your door could be open at night. | |
| They had shooting clubs at every school. | |
| My dad would walk in with his shotgun, put it in the locker, and go hunting after school. | |
| Now, not in America. | |
| Moon said Tuesday's ruling that the Newsom's are likely to win their lawsuit, which names the school board members, the superintendent, the school principal. | |
| It will be heard in July. | |
| So very interesting. | |
| And Fred Newsom, thank you for joining us here on the show. | |
| Apologize about getting our times mixed up. | |
| Thank you for bringing attention to the issue. | |
| Well, certainly. | |
| We believe in the Second Amendment. | |
| It's being quietly dismantled while we hear that we're having these victories. | |
| In reality, we're losing it. | |
| Look, I read the stories of people whose children, whose parents are in the military. | |
| They draw a picture of their father in their fatigues and the child gets grabbed by the police and they almost take the kid away and suspend them and do all this. | |
| It doesn't sound like the school's that bad, but I'm glad you're standing up. | |
| Exactly what happened? | |
| Well, Alan attended a shooting safety event, got a t-shirt from the event, and was proud of it. | |
| He enjoys target shooting and was proud of learning some safety and responsibility and wore his t-shirt to school. | |
| Well, apparently that horrified the school administrators, and they threatened to suspend him if he didn't take it off or turn it inside out right away, and told him not to bring it back. | |
| But I'm sure everything's fine to have armed school police and pat-downs and warrantless searches. | |
| As far as I know. | |
| As far as I know, and I guess Allen's First Amendment is | |
| In this school does not extend to him being able to express his pride in his chosen sport. | |
| That's amazing. | |
| So what happened? | |
| Did they just say turn the shirt inside out? | |
| They said turn it inside out. | |
| Alan said he didn't want to. | |
| They told him he had to. | |
| He basically got bullied into complying. | |
| And they told him if he came back to school with the shirt again he'd be suspended. | |
| Now, the judge is saying it looks like he'll win this suit. | |
| I don't know how... The judge says that we're unlikely to win. | |
| Okay. | |
| I must have misread that. | |
| I'm all over the map today. | |
| Sure. | |
| Well, I mean, how can the judge sit up there, though, and know which way it's going to go to begin with? | |
| Because he's the judge who's going to hear the case. | |
| And then he's saying that you're unlikely to win. | |
| Will there be a jury involved? | |
| Yes. | |
| Well, he's showing amazing bias. | |
| You should move to have him recuse himself because of this prejudice he showed. | |
| Well, I'm not an attorney, and I'll leave that up to the attorneys. | |
| We're going to stick | |
| Stick with this thing and see it through. | |
| But wait, I mean, you should point out, here's the Associated Press article, here's the judge saying he thinks that you're quote, unlikely to win this thing. | |
| How can he sit there and make comments like that? | |
| Judges aren't supposed to talk like that. | |
| That's a judicial misconduct if I ever heard of one. | |
| Judges that comment, oh yeah, this person should have lost this case after a trial, the trials get thrown out. | |
| Well, the judge also said that in having his First Amendment rights chilled, he did not suffer any damage. | |
| Well, the FBI has argued in court cases that you can't use the Constitution as a defense or as an argument. | |
| It's ridiculous. | |
| So here I am looking at this. | |
| Moon said in Tuesday's ruling that the Newsom's were unlikely to win their suit, which names a school board member, superintendent, school principal. | |
| It will be heard in July. | |
| Now, certainly, sir, you've heard about judges where suits or criminal cases, you have to get retried because a judge makes a comment that, oh, I knew that he was guilty or I knew this was a stupid suit all along. | |
| Have you talked to your lawyers yet about this statement? | |
| Not about this statement specifically, but I sure will now. | |
| I think you bring up an excellent point. | |
| It's amazing. | |
| It doesn't sound very impartial, does it? | |
| No, it doesn't. | |
| Well, it shows a major prejudice and shows that he's going to steer this trial, which he's not supposed to do. | |
| What has happened to your son during this process? | |
| How did the school treat him? | |
| Well, I won't say he's been mistreated. | |
| He's been getting some cold stares and some glares, and for some reason the school was unable to arrange his schedule so that he could be in the band again this year. | |
| But for the most part, I don't think he's been mistreated. | |
| He's been taking some razzing from the other students. | |
| Oh, because they want to be disarmed slaves. | |
| They love tearing, I guess. | |
| Yeah, he's labeled a boat rocker or a troublemaker now. | |
| He's never had a disciplinary problem. | |
| We've never had a call from the school in terms of his behavior. | |
| And rousing because he believes in what our veterans have fought and died for. | |
| What type of kids are they growing there in this Virginia school? | |
| A bunch of Soviets? | |
| I didn't think so until now, but we're a rural county. | |
| Um, a lot of... We... Our kids have a constitutional right to hunt. | |
| Allen's not a hunter, but if he wanted to, he has a constitutional, a state constitutional right to hunt. | |
| Um... I had thought we were... Well, certainly the Second Amendment, though, is a right to keep and bear arms, to defend against tyranny, and so that's a right to own firearms, period. | |
| Well, the Second Amendment's not about duck hunt. | |
| Um... | |
| It certainly is a right. | |
| But apparently Alan can't show pride in getting some education and proficiency at that. | |
| Now I'll bet you kids are wearing rock band t-shirts for these horrible bands that talk about sex and drugs and killing, but I'm sure that's okay. | |
| I think they look the other way on that. | |
| How can they say that the shirt depicts violence? | |
| Well, at the time that this happened, there was no rule against it. | |
| The school kept insisting that there was a rule prohibiting the shirt, and I kept asking them to show it to me. | |
| It was not in the handbook. | |
| They lied about the rule, but they changed the rule for this school year. | |
| The incident happened in the last school year, last spring. | |
| So they changed the rule to prohibit weapons | |
| Well, I would force the issue because courts have ruled that if they let other civic organizations into the school to proselytize, they have to let Eddie Eagle in. | |
| How about a visit by Eddie Eagle? | |
| Apparently, the state school people in Richmond have been pressing our county to institute the Eddie Eagle program, but they have refused to do so. | |
| Well, what I'm saying is, is in the court cases, I don't have them in front of me, but I've seen them in the news, that if they've allowed other groups in, and I know they let the gun grabbers in the schools, if they've done that, or any other group, then they have to let Eddie Eagle in. | |
| Well, I'd like to see him come in. | |
| I think it would do the kids a lot of good. | |
| I think it'd be a good part of their educational process. | |
| So your son tells you that kids are really saying, oh, you rock the boat. | |
| Well, isn't that what America's all about, is standing up for what you believe in? | |
| Fortunately, he is proud to be standing up for what he believes in. | |
| And if the boat needs rocking, he's proud to be rocking it a little bit. | |
| Well, Fred Newsome joining us from Charlottesville, Virginia. | |
| Anything else you'd like to add to the listenership of this show? | |
| If you want to find out more about the case, and we are being represented by the NRA. | |
| They have stepped forward. | |
| We didn't ask them to represent them. | |
| They became familiar with the situation, and they're providing legal representation, and they've got a write-up on the whole case at www.NRADefenseFund.org, along with a picture of the shirt. | |
| I don't know where things are going with our educational system. | |
| I think this is a bad sign, what's happening, and I sure appreciate you bringing attention to it on your show. | |
| Well, Fred, I appreciate you. | |
| Were you aware of the BATF program, started under Clinton, continued by Bush, where they have BATF in some of the public schools for a whole semester? | |
| And it says, I have the documents on this, that they are allowed to have the students, quote, write essays about family life. | |
| And is that not chilling? | |
| I just had a chill go up my spine. | |
| I have never heard about that before. | |
| Have you heard of Our Lady of Peace Act? | |
| I have heard of it. | |
| Well we need to, as members of the NRA, because you know there's good people in the NRA, need to pressure the NRA leadership not to compromise because that Our Lady of Peace Act is more draconian than the 68 Gun Control Act. | |
| And, uh, it goes towards registering gun owners, collecting data from the states, going after misdemeanor. | |
| Uh, folks, we don't need any more gun laws. | |
| And, uh, certainly I know you're now in contact with the NRA, and I know I'm giving you a lot of advice and stuff. | |
| You probably know more about this in some areas than I do. | |
| I just am desperate to save the Second Amendment, and I see it in deep, deep trouble with the lawsuits and the demonization, and I'm sure you've seen the billboards or heard about them where it says, report illegal guns, and it shows a picture of a revolver when a revolver isn't even illegal. | |
| So see how they're creating that perception that guns are already illegal? | |
| I see that perception and I see that that's what they're doing in the school and that's what this case is really all about. | |
| Alright, so one more time, that website to read the brief about this. | |
| www.NRADefenseFund.org | |
| Well, Fred, I know that you were busy with your business today, and I'm sorry we got you on late. | |
| Thanks for checking in with us, and God bless you, sir. | |
| Thank you very much, and God bless you, too. | |
| And one more thing, commend your son for standing up for the Second Amendment. | |
| I'll be happy to. | |
| And the First Amendment. | |
| Take care. | |
| You too. |