Well, it's like the gradually-less negative semantic loadings from "communist" to "progressive" to "left-wing" to "liberal." Make it disappear by using other words for it.
At that point in the above progression, "communists" almost don't exist anymore. They're just called "liberals," and that's more-or-less acceptable nowadays.
Now, that's an exaggeration for the sake of illustration, and I've been knocked on another board for bringing that out, but the "liberals," "left-wingers," "progressives," and "communists" are superbly adept at manipulating semantics. (Notice the reverse progression.) This "knocking" occured because I supposedly didn't know the carefully-shaped and politically-polished definitions of those terms you might find on the net nowadays.
Like, "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is," courtesy of President Clinton.
As it happens, vectoring all my opinions and no-opinions on various matters, the resultant would make me pretty middle of the road, although I often offer extreme positions and statements for the sake of "pushing" the compromises demanded of me back to where I think they really should be.
Well, at least the "definition" of the one fingered salute remains stable and unequivocal. No chance of its semantic loading changing much.
Unlike the "gun" gesture, which is often applied as a gesture of "right on," or a greeting among friends rather than "I want to shoot you." The former usage is often accompanied by a clicking of the tongue, which further reinforces and emphazies camaderie between two people.
Ah, semantics.
Actually, I suspect the school official who reported on the deaf kid's use of a similar sign-language gesture for his name felt pretty "rule-bound" by "the rules" to report this problem. Too bad it kind of backfired on him. Which, in itself, speaks loudly about the stupidity of such rules in the first place. "Zero tolerance" means "zero intelligence," to my mind. No rational, mature, considered judgement alllowed.
Terry, 230RN