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PHOENIX — A school that suspended a boy for drawing a sketch of a gun has drawn no small amount of flak from locals and has many asking one question:

Has society become so fearful in the post-Columbine era that a boy can't draw a picture of what boys have been drawing pictures of for decades?

"Most little boys are not going to be drawing flowers," said Paula Mosteller, mother of the 13-year-old boy who was suspended from Payne Junior High in Chandler for three days this past week.

Payne school officials and Chandler Unified School District spokesman Terry Locke declined to comment.

Frederic Bemak, a professor at George Mason University in Virginia who specializes in at-risk youth and school violence, said the disciplinary action is representative of an overall culture of fear in the post-9/11 United States that has seen a spate of school shootings in the past decade.

"I think we've become overreactive and we're not allowing time to really look at and examine situations," Bemak said.

Bemak questioned what kind of lesson the school is teaching the boy, other children and the boy's parents if his drawing was truly harmless.

"If the message is, 'You're not allowed to draw a gun, you're not to say the word 'gun,' you're not to think 'gun,' you get an angry kid," he said. "I'm nervous about the lack of tolerance for the expression of feelings."

Mosteller said her son, whose name neither she nor the school district disclosed, simply drew a "childish doodle" of something that resembled a gun or a laser.

Ervin Staub, a psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts who specializes in the prevention of youth violence, said it's no wonder children think about and doodle guns and other weapons in the current American climate.

"Little boys are so into guns, even totally nonviolent kids, because we have such a gun culture," he said. "I think that among boys it is such a widespread tendency, it can be an expression of nothing."

He said he thinks the Chandler school went too far and may have lost an opportunity to involve the boy and other children in a dialogue about school violence and how to watch and report warning signs their peers may be exhibiting.

Jane Grady, assistant director of the Boulder Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, said she thinks schools are trying to do their best.

"Most of them really want to do the right thing, and a lot of times they don't know what the right thing to do is or don't know how to go about it," she said. "And I think they're fearful that it could turn into something more serious, so they better do something about it before that happens."

What schools need to do is find a balance between overreacting and not doing enough, said Ron Stephens, executive director of the National School Safety Center, which helps schools develop plans on addressing school violence.

"There's always the challenge to identify where a disciplinary infraction crosses the line and becomes an offense," he said.

Mosteller criticized the school's reaction and its decision to punish her son.

"I thought it was extremely paranoid," she said. "A lot of people in this world have drawn guns, and it doesn't mean they're going to go to school and kill people."