The Laughing Wolf

Guns Are Not Fun!

Guess what greeted me when I walked in the local mall. Posters, drawings, and other propaganda produced by direction of the local schools.

While it was apparently part of some sort of guns, gangs, and violence reduction program, you can guess what got the most play. Guns are evil. Guns are bad. No guns in our schools. People who carry guns are evil.

I have no doubt that the kids received all the usual propaganda and were given all the statistics on the number of children killed each year with guns, though I doubt they knew to check to see how many of those children happened to be 19 or so. I sincerely doubt that the fact that some two million times a year guns are used to stop or prevent crimes was ever mentioned. Nope, only the bad, the horrible, the nasty gun, who is bad, bad, bad.

And my tax dollars are going to this tripe. From the posters I saw and read, it was clear that no effort had been made to teach gun or weapon safety, and that of the unholy trinity outlined, that guns got the most play and the most vilification. Gee, we shouldn’t say too much against the gangs, after all, because they are heavily ethnic and that might be cultural relativism if we do.

Now don’t get me wrong. Violence is bad, and I have no use for gangs. I agree that steps should be taken to curb and or prevent such. There is a reason I got my godsons Chance and Calculation into martial arts. There and at home they learn that violence is not a good or acceptable thing. Violence will get you a controlled and measured reaction that will stop the violence in a way that you will not like, and that there are punishments for violence beyond that which comes from being stopped. Give them self-reliance, self-respect, love, attention, and involvement with positive groups, and they won’t want or need to get involved with gangs.

What I object to, very strongly, is the effort at mind control of kids in the guise of education. This was clearly no balanced presentation of facts. There was no evidence in any poster I saw that any effort had been made to teach the kids enough safety so that if they did see or find a gun, that they would not be hurt.

No, it is far easier to vilify an object, as evil and useless. To plant the seeds of right-thought early and often. To show that everyone who has a gun is wrong, dangerous, and/or evil. Never mind that police, sheriffs, and security officers carry guns; never mind that soldiers including those like mommy and daddy carry guns to protect us; and, most of all, never mind the uncounted number of private citizens who do the same.

Yep, get at them young. Terrorize, traumatize, and lie to them now so that they will be good right-thinking citizens later. And they wonder why private schools and home schooling are becoming ever more popular.

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