A school district has demanded a three-year-old deaf student named Hunter use a different hand sign for his name as the current gesture resembles a gun, his parents have claimed. The Grand Island, Nebraska district reportedly has a policy forbidding children from bringing ‘any instrument that looks like a weapon’ to school.

School administrators claim Hunter Spanjer’s name sign, which he makes by crossing his index finger and middle finger and then shaking his hands, violates that policy, his parents said. While it is perhaps unsurprising that the sign for the name Hunter resembles a gun, supporters of the family have argued that it is not something the little boy will be aware of.

‘Anybody that I have talked to thinks this is absolutely ridiculous. This is not threatening in any way,’ the boy’s grandmother, Janet Logue, told KOLN.

‘His name sign, they say, is a violation of their weapons policy,’ his father, Brian Spanjer, added. ‘It’s a registered sign through S.E.E.’ – which stands for Signing Exact English, a sign language system.

He should change his name to something like Phuc Yu, but then that would be considered bullying. Sigh.