Graduating high school seniors will be allowed to pose with guns for their senior portraits this year, a rural Nebraska school district decided on Monday, according to the Omaha World-Herald.
Broken Bow school board members approved the rule by voting 6-0 at Monday's meeting, which will now allow students to display their favorite firearms, but only in a "tasteful and appropriate" manner. Additionally, the policy prohibits the students from pointing the weapon at the camera or displaying a hunted animal in distress.
The move comes after a student requested the board last year to allow his senior portrait to include a gun, but was eventually denied permission, KHAS reported.
"The board, I believe, felt they wanted to give students who are involved in those kinds of things the opportunity to take a senior picture with their hobby, with their sport, just like anybody with any other hobby or sport," superintendent Mark Sievering told the World-Herald, adding that district officials had discussed the issue at length.
"We decided we didn't want to have any offensive depictions of firearms but, as we talked about it and the board talked about it, we could tell there was a sense that to allow a student to have a firearm, as long as it was done in a tasteful manner in terms of a hunting or sporting type picture that that might be OK," Sievering said.
Ken Myers, the Broken Bow School Board president, echoed that sentiment, according to 1101 Now.
"We have the 1 Box Shooting Club, a great trap range and sporting clays range," Myers said. "A lot of youth are interested in that so that brings up firearms, I guess, a little bit more to the forefront along with the hunting."
But students will not be allowed to "[brandish]" their gun or point it "at the camera." If they do, their photos "will not be used" in yearbooks or other school publications, the school board stated.
Meanwhile, even though Nebraska does not have a minimum age set for hunting, children below 12 are still required by state law to be supervised by a licensed hunter. The law, however, makes it illegal to "possess a firearm on school grounds, unless the holder is in an exempt category, such as the police force," according to Time.
