Boortz caught onto this today, and it bears repeating. Illinois Rep. Annazette Collins made the mistake of suggesting that elementary-school aged children ought to be taught about gun safety, and now the harpies are circling.
Mayor Daley, who’s always had a rather sloppy understanding of civil liberties, called the idea, “the silliest position I’ve ever heard taken.”
According to “activist priest” Michael Pfleger:
That’s like saying we might as well sell drugs legally (…) We don’t want access to guns. We have children dying in this city. We’re talking about teaching kids in grammar school how to shoot guns? That’s crazy!
I guess I must have grown up in about the craziest environment imaginable, then. It’s a wonder I turned out sane.
When I was in high school, the ROTC drill team had M1 carbines on school grounds. Many of my friends had guns of their own, and more than a few cars in the school parking lot had rifles in them. After school, we’d frequently go shooting in the woods. In fact, the parents of one of my friends had registered machine guns, which they let us use.
Nobody shot up the school. In fact, nobody got hurt at all, whether by malice or negligence. In fact, the worst violence I ever witnessed was the occasional drunken fistfight.
Sure, we had a wide economic gulf between rich and poor. We had racial inequity back then, and there were problems with drugs, as there always have been. Surely none of those factors have changed so drastically in the last twenty years.
So, what’s so different now?
Simple. Kids don’t grow up shooting anymore. As a result, we have the mentality quoted above.
I should really point out that 4-H found shooting to be a sport 63 times safer than football or baseball, but the older I get, the more I realize that I’m shouting in the wind.
Then again, as Ursula LeGuin once pointed out, “what sane person could live in this world and not be crazy?”