COLUMBUS, Ohio – A 10-year-old Ohio student has learned the hard way to keep his fingers holstered while he’s at school.

The fifth-grader at Devonshire Alternative Academy School in Columbus was suspended for three days recently for pretending his fingers were a gun, and aiming the dangerous weapon at another student’s head, CNN reports.

The student’s father, Paul Entingh, told the news site his son was “goofing off,” but district officials contend the behavior violated Ohio’s zero tolerance policy as a “level two look-a-like firearm.”

MORE NEWS: Know These Before Moving From Cyprus To The UK

“He was pointing it at a friend’s head and he said ‘boom.’ The kid didn’t see it. No other kids saw it. But the teacher saw it,” Entingh told CNN. “It wasn’t threatening. It wasn’t hostile. It was a 10-year-old kid playing.”

School officials, however, apparently aren’t playing around. Officials told the media they’ve warned students on several occasions, and sent letters home with parents about the behavior problem over the previous three weeks.

“The boys have gone around fake shooting and making paper guns at class,” Columbus City Schools spokesman Jeff Warner told the news site. “It’s inappropriate. (Devonshire Principal Patricia Price) has sent notes to parents for the past three weeks alerting them of the problem.”

Entingh said he never received a notice, though he acknowledged school officials have told students they take gun-related behavior very seriously.

“I don’t know if it’s to the point it happened so much they needed to punish somebody to set an example. I don’t know, it blows my mind,” he told CNN.

State Sen. Charleta Tavares believes school officials are taking the state’s zero tolerance policy to the extreme, and introduced legislation recently to reform the state’s 1998 zero tolerance law.

MORE NEWS: How to prepare for face-to-face classes

That law requires schools to “adopt a policy of zero tolerance for violent, disruptive, or inappropriate behavior, including excessive truancy,” as well as “strategies to address such behavior that range from prevention to intervention,” CNN reports.

Tavares believes schools are relying more on strict punishments than prevention or intervention to address behavior problems.

“We have moved away from common sense, ensuring that the punishment fits the infraction,” she told CNN. “We should maintain the highest form of punishment which is expulsion or suspension to those cases that cause the most harm.”

The data seems to support that assertion.

Last school year, a total of 419 students were suspended in Ohio for “firearm look-alikes,” 38 of which were expelled. In Columbus, 69 students were suspended and 12 expelled for the same offense, while no Columbus students were expelled for harassment or intimidation, CNN reports.

The strict zero tolerance policy in Ohio is among numerous similar policies adopted after a series of school shootings around the country in recent years. The Associated Press reports Columbus school officials previously disciplined students for firing a Nerf foam dart gun at school, and Maryland officials last year suspended a 7-year-old boy for chewing his Pop-Tart into a gun shape.

The over-the-top reactions do little more than confuse young students, and mire their academic record. Instead of reacting with force to an innocent gesture, many parents and reform advocates believe it would be much more advantageous to explain to students why the behavior is troubling, and to contact parents directly if a particular child refuses to conceal their finger pistols at school.