BALTIMORE, Md. – William Welch doesn’t believe his 7-year-old son deserved a two-day suspension for chewing his Pop Tart into a pretend gun he used to pretend shoot his classmates, and he’s spent the last four years working to remove the infraction from the boy’s record.

“It’s a mark on his record for something that doesn’t need to be there,” Welch told The Washington Post. “There’s just a lot of unknowns, and I don’t want something that could potentially debilitate his future.”

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The incident occurred in the hypersensitive months after the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut that left 26 people, including 20 children dead at the hands of a school shooter.

The Park Elementary School second-grader chewed his Pop Tart into a gun shape and announced his discovery before proceeding to pop off the make-believe pistol at his classmates. School officials suspended the boy for two days, and the boy’s father contends officials cited the pastry weapon as the reason. Anne Arundel’s Park officials argued the punishment was justified because of the child’s long history of disruptions and behavior issues, according to the news site.

“I would almost call it insanity. I mean with all the potential issues that could be dealt with at school — real threats, bullies, whatever the issue is,” Welch told WPTV shortly after the March 1, 2013 incident. “It’s a pastry.”

His son, Josh, explained that he initially envisioned a mountain, but his strawberry Pop Tart didn’t cooperate.

“It was already a rectangle and I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top and it kinda looked like a gun but it wasn’t,” he said. “All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun kinda.”

Welch appealed his son’s punishment to the Maryland State Board of Education, which backed the school district in February 2015. So he appealed again to the county circuit court.

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Anne Arundel County Circuit Court Judge Ronald A. Silkworth recently upheld the Board of Education’s decision, writing that “a suspension was appropriately used as a corrective tool to address this disruption, based on the student’s past history of escalating behavioral issues,” the Post reports.

“We have believed from the outset that the actions of the school staff were not only appropriate and consistent with Board of Education policies and school system regulations, but in the best interests of all students,” Anne Arundel County schools spokesman Bob Mosier told the news site. “It is unfortunate that the character of those staff members has been called into question throughout this long process, but we are grateful that Judge Silkworth reaffirmed the validity of their actions.”

Welch’s attorney, Robin Ficker, said the case is the first out of 10 post Sandy Hook student discipline cases he’s handled involving overreacting administrators that did not result in expunging the infraction from the student’s record.

“There was no physical injury, and I think they should be able to deal with a 7-year-old in-house,” he told the Post. “I hope the school system will think twice about putting kids out of school instead of dealing with minor discipline problems. It would be different if this was a 17-year-old and he was threatening physical harm.”