OK, now it's just silly. Any object may be used to inflict bodily injury. You can kill someone with cotton balls if you stuff enough of them down his trachea.

Presumably this would ban pencils and pens as well.

Sounds like the legislators of both Mississippi and South Carolina have been smoking the same bad stuff.

I propose a different approach: Whenever legislators adopt any criminal statute, let them all be charged with it and see how well they can defend themselves before a jury.

The mathematical principle behind requiring a unanimous vote of a jury of twelve in a criminal trial is to discourage criminal statutes that lack the support of at least 94% of the electorate.

Legislators need to be taught that making everyone a criminal makes them criminals.

I hate to differ, but unless there are other provisions of the code applicable, you all are misreading the statute. This rule does not apply to "personnel authorized by school officials". My guess is that, given the school dress codes and dress regulations surely in place, all of the students should be considered authorized to dress in accord with those regulations.

(This is not to say that this statute is not poorly drafted, just that it does not appear, even in its poor form, to ban wearing clothes.)

In my pre-law life I was an educator in a rural S.C. middle school. One of my students was rustling through his bookbag for a book when a loud clatter erupted on the floor tiles.

Out had fallen a normal silverware dinner knife (not a steak knife). One of the other students, who had a greatly self-inflated reputation for being a thug, leapt out of his seat to yell "Boy! What you gonna do with that knife? Make Mr. ALawDawg a sandwich?"

With that public display I had no choice but to report the incident. The student was suspended because the knife blade was longer than 2 inches. Meanwhile every student in class was holding a deadlier improvised weapon as they took notes.

Obnoxious.

Remove the word "object" and they can still wear clothes.

Might as well remove the word "device" as well, or they'll be coming after my smartphone.

This could be a real selling point for SC state universities.

Yes. Oh yes.

[Anywhere in the south, really].

I hate to differ, but unless there are other provisions of the code applicable, you all are misreading the statute. This rule does not apply to "personnel authorized by school officials". My guess is that, given the school dress codes and dress regulations surely in place, all of the students should be considered authorized to dress in accord with those regulations.

There is specific authorization for parents who are picking up their children to be clothed? The UPS man? I think I'd get it in writing first, we're talking a felony after all :-)

I believe CA law bans all concealed carry of "dirks or daggers". That's cool, but it specifically defines a dirk or dagger with this text: "As used in this section, a 'dirk' or 'dagger' means a knife or other instrument with or without a handguard that is capable of ready use as a stabbing weapon that may inflict great bodily injury or death."

And there you have it -- in CA, a screwdriver is a dirk or dagger.

I especially appreciate "with or without a handguard". I don't know the history behind that, but I'd love to.

-Wm

Tennesseean: I hate to differ, but unless there are other provisions of the code applicable, you all are misreading the statute. This rule does not apply to "personnel authorized by school officials". My guess is that, given the school dress codes and dress regulations surely in place, all of the students should be considered authorized to dress in accord with those regulations.

Would a school's students really be considered "personnel"? That term usually denotes staff, employees. That's also how the term is used in S.C. Code § 16-3-312, "Student committing assault and battery against school personnel":

(B) A student who commits an assault and battery, other than one that is aggravated, on school grounds or at a school-sponsored event against any person affiliated with the school in an official capacity including, but not limited to, administrators, teachers, faculty, substitute teachers, teachers' assistants, student teachers, custodial staff, food service staff, volunteers, law enforcement officers, school bus drivers, school crossing guards, or other regularly assigned school-contracted persons is guilty of assault and battery against school personnel which is a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, must be fined not more than one thousand dollars, or imprisoned not more than one year, or both.

Assault and battery against another student is not assault and battery against school "personnel."

I agree with PubliusFL. Tennessean is reading the statute as if it said "persons" instead of "personnel".

Even a towel wrapped at the waist would be banned under this law:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-boggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.

Clearly, legislators in South Carolina don't know where their towels are.

Students aren't allowed to bring compasses to math classes?

A Conceited Jerk: Thus, the final category should be limited to things of the same kind as those listed previously.

What kinds of items do you take to be "of the same kind" as those listed previously? Presumably no South Carolina school would be able to have a baseball team or a marching band with a drum major, unless all activities involving baseball bats and batons took place off school property. Surely at least those items would be "of the same kind" as "a metal pipe or pole."

Figures, forty years too late. All we had was micro-micro-minis (basically a large belt), and bra burnings when I went to college.

SSFC wins the thread for the HHGTTG quote.

When play ground fights get out of hand children resort to kicking each other, using their shoes as knuckle dusters for the feet to inflict injuries that they could not cause unaided. The stiff, hard, thin leather soles of tradition schools shoes cut shins, and any shoe helps stamp on the victim once they have been knocked to the ground.

Saying that clothes are banned because the may be used to inflict bodily injury is a stretch. It is contrived to read "may" as "theoretically possible". Where the object in question is commonly used to inflict injuries then plainly it may be so used, so shoes are amongst the prohibited objects.

Clearly the Society for Barefoot Living has sleeper agents with the South Carolina legislature.

"Y'all stand back now, 'cause ya might get hurt..."