You can do a lot with this definition. "one with a blade longer than 5 and a half inches that is "designed to cut or stab another by being thrown,"

First, does it mean a knive advertised as a throwing knife? Does it mean any knife that can have that effect? Does the throwing requirement apply only to the stabbing action, or to the cutting ability as well?

I suspect the best, but not mandatory interpretation is that it is any knife that can cut, or which can stab by being thrown. Therefore, I suspect what it means is any knife (greater than 5 1/2 inches) with a sharp blade or a point.

So as I thought about this, I came up with this guess: The knife is not a butter knife; it is a bread knife. It is not serrated, but it probably is sharp. It may well have a point. But it is not a butter knife. (Texans use 10" butter knives?)

Next issue: The kid's a good kid. Principal knows it. Principal does not apply the rule. Another kid brings a knife, also claiming it was an accident. The kid is not a good kid. The kid is of a different ethnic origin than the first. Guess what happens to the principal, the school district, and the insurance company or the district's self-insurance program?

Believe me, I do not defend non-thinking. If this story was as you people have described it (dull, pointless, butter knife), I would quit my job as the principal before expelling the kid, and I would expect anyone of principle to do the same. (Just as I would quit as a judge before imposing a life sentence on a trivial nonviolent "third strike.)

But the facts are getting all mushed up here, folks.

(All sorts of intricacies from unknown facts. For example, if I were the principal, and the security guard found that in the back of the kids' pickup (an open bed), and I knew that this was not a troublemaker, I would call him in, and tell him what would happen to him if he admitted that he brought a sharp pointed ten inch knife to the school, then ask him of he brought that knife to the school. Many of you would probably handle it differently.)