To Punish, or not to Punish

I was watching the news tonight and I saw a story about a highschooler that has been suspended for having a weapon on school property. Now this sounds reasonably until you hear the background. The kid is an Eagle scout who, when he was 13, saved his cousin's life. The weapon in question was a 2-inch knife locked-up in his car. It was part of an outdoor's survival kit that he kept in his trunk. Now, I agree that we need to be tough on anyone bringing weapons to school, but this is ridiculous. The knife was obviously unaccesable to the student during school, it was below the legal definition of a weapon, and it was part of a survival kit, something that should be encouraged, not discouraged. I also like something that the kid said. He pointed out that if you are using this definition of a weapon, then the baseball team should not have bats. As he said, whether something is a weapn is definded by the intention. Not all gun owners are serial killers. The larger point here, is that we need to better define what should be considered a weapon for school purposes. Obviously, a gun or a large knife should be considered weapon, for other things we must take into account accessibility and probable intention before we go about ruining kids lives.