Wake Up and Stop This Insanity

Okay…I’ve kept quiet on the current situation in America for a while now, but I can’t stay silent any longer.

The last few days have just blown my mind at the nigh unbelievable amount of stupidity coming out of schools across the country.  You know what I’m talking about, or at least you should know.  And if you don’t, shame on you.  Here’s a very nice article about all these incidents, with handy links in the story to no less than NINE incidents of this idiocy: 
http://www.infowars.com/five-year-old-faces-suspension-after-building-lego-gun/

I’m talking about all these young kids, who are just trying to do what kids do, you know, play with other kids?  Yeah, you remember that, right, when kids were allowed to be kids?  Well, that’s apparently changed, because there have been over half a dozen incidents of stupidity from over-protective, fear-struck adults who think kids shouldn’t be allowed to play.  So what if said kids happen to be playing with TOY guns, BUBBLE guns, NERF guns, or building a gun out of LEGOS, or hell, not even guns, but pointing fingers or a PIECE OF PAPER shaped like a gun, or even TALKING about a NERF gun?  Well, apparently, that’s all it takes to get an adult involved to scold the student, suspend them from class, label them a terrorist threat, and/or lock down the entire school.

After the Sandy Hook incident, I can understand a little bit of paranoia when it comes to school security.  But if memory serves…none of the mass shooters in any of the high profile shootings over the last…hell, ever, were between the ages of 5 and 10 years old.  What is wrong with people now?  When did it become so wrong to let kids be kids?  Has anyone stopped to think that just maybe these adults who are deciding to punish these children for doing what children do are causing them a lot of long term damage?

It sickens me to see how far society has slipped, even from the late 80′s and early 90′s when I was in grade school.  I grew up loving guns, as did plenty of other classmates.  We played with toy guns all the time (I even had one that looked almost real, with the orange cap on the barrel of course, but it was solid wood with a metal barrel and a working bolt and trigger, not that it could fire anything, of course), pretended to shoot each other, talked about our favorite movies, a lot of which were action movies that contained a lot of gun play.  At that time, we were also into games like Wolfenstein 3D and Doom, and, get this, we were allowed to play them on school computers!  SHOCK AND HORROR!!! (that last bit was sarcasm, if you didn’t pick up on it)

But that’s not all!  We even drew pictures of guns, in fact, I’ve still got a huge collection of the stuff I drew back then, some of it pretty damn good for a kid who couldn’t draw (and still can’t draw as an adult) very well at all.  Hell, some of what I drew was based off the Punisher comics, in particular one of the weapon journals.  I thought it was cool, my friends did it too, and the teachers never said a word to us about it.

But it went even further than that!  I even remember writing a journal entry on what I wanted to be when I grew up.  You know what that was?  A weapons designer.  Yeah, that’s right, I wanted to design and build weapons when I grew up.  And was anything said to me?  Was I labeled a terrorist threat?  Did I have to undergo any psychological testing?  Hell no!  In fact, I got credit for the assignment and nothing changed at all.  No hysterics, no knee-jerk reactions, no traumatizing a child, nothing like that.

And you know what?  I turned out pretty normal.  I collect firearms now, including an “evil” AR-15 and an “evil” AKM.  I even have almost two dozen 30 round magazines between the two of them.  I have a selection of semi-auto handguns with magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.  I still play first person shooter video games, I go out shooting in the hills behind my house, and I work at a tech support center.  According to the liberal line of thought, I should have gone on a mass murder spree a long time ago.  And believe me, if anything could set off an urge to kill, it’d be working tech support…

But I haven’t.  And I have never once entertained the thought of performing such a heinous act.  I was raised by a very caring family, had a rather normal social life, even though I was the ‘quiet one’.  I’m still the ‘quiet one’, preferring to listen and only offer my input if I’ve got something worth adding, but the point is, I wasn’t raised in a fear-mongering culture where gun ownership is demonized by a government intent on collapsing our republic and rebuilding a communist dictatorship.  I didn’t grow up hearing how ‘wrong’ it was to like guns, or that you’re a bad kid for wanting to play with toy versions of them.

I’d like to think that I grew up normal, and all this over-reaction to kids wanting to be kids is completely uncalled for.  It’s ridiculous, and anyone who would accuse a child of being a terrorist threat for playing with a bubble gun should be ashamed of themselves.  Really, what kind of example are you putting forth for these children?  To be afraid of one another?  That guns are bad because you say so?  That you shouldn’t try to have fun because that’s bad too?

Guns are tools, completely inanimate objects that CANNOT harm anyone or anything without the help of a person behind them.  It’s ultimately up to the individual what they do with a gun, and having a gun isn’t going to automatically make someone a bad person, despite the example that seems to be getting set in schools now.

I would like to think that my values and beliefs were shaped by the strong familial bonds I grew up with, the guidance of my parents and extended family.  I’m sure some of it came from my teachers as well, who, for the most part, tried to get us kids excited to learn and encouraged us to interact with one another.  Granted, sometimes kids would have fights; that’s inevitable, and sometimes they would have to be disciplined.  But such discipline was for a good reason, like when kids were physically fighting or constantly breaking the rules, but not to the extremes that have been coming up since Newtown.  Hell, I remember when it was okay to paddle kids who kept getting in trouble; that kind of thing wasn’t fun, and quite frankly, it usually worked.

No child should be punished so extremely for playing with toys; in my day, the toy was confiscated, and nothing else was said, and there was a pretty good chance you’d be getting it back at the end of the day.  Now it seems they suspend you, brand you a terrorist, and require you to go take a psychological exam.  Or get searched in front of all the other students.  Or suffer a school-wide scare by locking the place down to search for said toy guns.

Wake the hell up, people.  Newtown was a tragedy, no doubt about that, but for crying out loud, treating kids like this, exposing them to such measures is beyond ridiculous.  I can only imagine the long-term trauma these kids are going to suffer because they were told it was wrong to play.

Wake up and stop the insanity, people!

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I can already hear some comments regarding my screen name, “Urban Sniper”.  I can assure you that I’ve never harmed anyone outside of the video games I have played, specifically Team Fortress (the original, mind you), where I started using that name.  I kept using it for my screen names and usernames, and it has stuck over the years.  My vision is nowhere near good enough to even come close to an actual military sniper.  It’s a screen name, nothing more; I picked it at the time because it sounded cool.  It has nothing to do with my state of mind.

I will say, that in my life, I have killed three things, though:  two possums, and a feral cat that likely had rabies.  All of which were threatening the other animals we have around the house.

I’m not a hunter; I use my firearms for target shooting and self defense.  I believe in the United States Constitution, and particularly in the 2nd Amendment, which isn’t about hunting.  It’s about protecting yourself and others, and in particular about protecting them from tyrannical governments.  Any gun control measures are an infringement of our rights, and I do not support any form of gun control, especially the Assault Weapons Ban of 2013; it’s my personal opinion that anyone (Senator Feinstein for example) who would even suggest or support such a thing should be immediately removed from office.

Anyone who says differently needs to take a long, hard look at the history surrounding the American Revolution and the creation of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, then take a look beyond what the mass media and the out of control Obama administration is trying to shovel down your throats.

The information is readily available online; just make the effort to look beyond what they want you to see, take a chance and just maybe you’ll start realizing that things could be better in this country, that we could actually have freedom and rights again.  Here are some starters for those who haven’t looked in on the details:  NDAA bill, Obama drone strikes and how many children have been killed, DHS buying 7000 full auto weapons and 1.6 billion rounds of ammunition (remember that the DHS operates within the US, and that the ammo they purchased is mostly hollow point ammo, which is not usable in war because of the Geneva Convention; who exactly are they arming up against?)