Filling my computer screen was a bunch of twerps manning automatic rifles. Probably some boy soldier group in a third world country. Wrong! These were red-blooded American boys.
Jennifer Steinhauer had an article in today’s New York Times under the headline Scouts Train to Fight Terrorists, and More. Quoting from the article:
“The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.”
There has to be a better way to train youths to be firefighters and police officers. Putting a gun in their hands, somehow strikes me as overkill. Ensuring that they get an education which prepares them for adulthood should be the first priority. If someone wants to be a police officer or firefighter the time to train them is when they are adults and have made a responsible decision. Dwelling on the following further infuriated me.
“This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl,” said A. J. Lowenthal, a sheriff’s deputy here in Imperial County, whose life clock, he says, is set around the Explorers events he helps run. “It fits right in with the honor and bravery of the Boy Scouts.”
The Boy Scouts of America evidently have come a long way since I first pledged to do a good deed a day. Is it their aim to become The Boy Army of America?
3 comments:
I am so mad just reading this, I don't know if I can stomach the link.
Goddamnit anyway. Goddamn dumbass gun people.
This is "an education which prepares them for adulthood"... the knowledge that PEOPLE DIE, and if it's a choice between a person without morals and one with, the one with the morals had better preserve his own life.
The problem with the BSA program is that they are training government robots rather than militia. That's nothing new for the Scouts, which was founded by Lord Baden-Powell because Britain's soldier material was so unready. And regular Scouts do shooting too, with real guns.
I highly doubted they had access to "automatic rifles" (even with the government involved), so I hit the link...and they were PELLET GUNS! Glorified BB guns! Oh the humanity!! Did you even read the article? Or did you look at the picture and freak out?
I guess the Plain Dealer had this link so they could make their own "professionals" look good.
Yes, the picture freaked me out and yes I erred in not referring to pellet guns,yes they were guns. By the way the link was to a New York Times article, not the Plain Dealer. Yes I read the article.
Post a Comment