Fighting the Education Anti-Gun Fanatics

For a while, I’ve been wondering if it’s parental malpractice to put your kids in public schools. More and more, it’s gone beyond wondering. For example, last week the Washington Post reported a nasty case of abusive behavior by school officials in Calvert County, Maryland: A five-year-old who brought a cowboy-style cap pistol on a school bus — orange-tipped, and something that no one could possibly mistake for a real gun — was interrogated for two hours (an interrogation that was so long, or so stressful, that he wet his pants) and then suspended for 10 days. Who treats a five-year-old that way?

The Post reports: “…children in first and second grade have been disciplined for pointing their fingers like guns and for chewing a Pop-Tart-like pastry into the shape of a gun. In Pennsylvania, a 5-year-old was suspended for talking about shooting a Hello Kitty bubble gun that blows soap bubbles.”

Meanwhile, in Massachusetts, another kindergartner was punished for bringing a tiny Lego gun — the illustration in the Boston Herald places it next to a quarter coin — with detention, and forced to write a letter of apology to the school bus driver. For bringing a tiny piece of plastic.

What’s up with this? It’s not based on any concern with safety. Lego guns, cap guns, bubble guns, nibbled Pop Tarts, and fingers are no threat to safety. And the wild overreaction in these cases says there’s more going on here than simple school discipline. As I said, who treats a 5-year-old this way? It smacks of fanaticism.

In fact, it seems like a kind of quasi-religious fanaticism … doing its best to exterminate the very idea of guns. It’s some sort of wacky moral-purity crusade. If a few toddlers have to suffer along the way, that’s tough. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Read more from this story HERE.