There’s justifiable outrage at “child soldiers,” then there’s the sort of hysterical whining on display here:
http://www.thisisplymouth.co.uk/news/Cadets-parade-hit-rifle-ban/article-2842270-detail/article.html
ARMY cadets in Plymouth have been banned from carrying rifles in public just days before they were due to take part in a Remembrance festival.
The children had spent weeks practising rifle drill for a display at the Plymouth Pavilions tonight.
But this week they were told by their top brass that the rifles had to go.
Devon Cadet Executive Officer Major David Waterworth told The Herald yesterday that the Plymouth cadets had been ignoring a national ruling.
“It isn’t a new regulation. It’s been in force for about ten years, ever since the UK signed the agreement against using child soldiers.
“There is no need for children to appear in public with weapons. It does upset some members of the public.
“There is no need for it. It doesn’t reflect our aims and ethos in the Army Cadet Force.”
Note that the article doesn’t seem to give the ages of these “children.” Could be 17, for all I know. But even if the cadets are 8… so what? Training with firearms is something that should begin early. Your average gun shop in Utah has a section devoted specifically for kids, typically bolt-action .22 rifles, scaled down appropriately. If there are some members of the public who are upset at the sight of cadets carrying rifles… man the hell up, Nancy, and get yourself some insensitivity training.
15 Responses to “Upsetting the public”
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Some of the parades like our 4th of July parade here let the kids use
wooden simulated rifles.
The kids in the photo appear to be in their teens. What’s the fear?
I like the idea of “insensitivity training.” How might one teach it? It’s an overdue thing at American universities.
Required textbook must be a new edition of ‘Niven’s Laws’!
At least that one has been very useful to me and my best friend…
> I like the idea of “insensitivity training.” How might one teach it?
Rather easily. An example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIvk1zrQng8
Insensitivity training would on every level be better than sensitivity training. Instead of trying to hammer people intoi being what they are not, and unpreparing people for experiencing the inevitable unpleasantnesses to be found in life, insensitivity training would prepare the trainees to handle the world as it is.
Instead of “sensitivity training” leaving nothing but weeping martyrs and fear and shame, “insensitivty training” would leave people able to enjoy their lives without making life hell for others.
I’m trying to remember when I shot my first firearm; it was way, way, back in time, and was a .22 caliber rifle…I think I was around age 6-8 at the time, and by North Dakota standards that was fairly late to start.
Up here, we have kids that go duck hunting with 20 gauge shotguns at around the time they are heavy enough that the recoil won’t blow them off their feet, and start hunting deer with 30.6 rifles by their 10th birthday.
I always loved the scene in the movie “Sergeant York” where they ask when he learned to shoot a rifle, and he tells them that he doesn’t actually remember, but it was around the same time he learned to walk.
Then, of course, he puts the saliva on the front sight of the Springfield 1903 rifle to “help cut the haze” and shows the army what he _really_ can do. 🙂
One of my favorite childhood pastimes was taking a Daisy lever-charging BB rifle I had inherited from my grandmother on my mom’s side and shooting at power lines on telephone poles with it. These made a really cool reverberating “ka-whoo” sound when you hit them, and after a few days I was able to hit them around 90% of the time.
What is odd about my firearms experience is that I’ve fired a _lot_ of different types of pistols (including both a six-barrel pepperbox and a three-barrel duck’s-foot) as well as several different types of standard and percussion military rifles and sub-machine guns in their semi-auto versions…but never a shotgun of any type or a standard hunting rifle.
BTW, this is fun; take the kid’s BB rifle pledge:
http://www.lileks.com/institute/funny/comicads/guns/index.html
Those God-damn Nazis or Japs start screwing with us, and the boys of America are going to shoot their fucking eyes out with their “Red Rider” BB rifles.
We’ll have none of that shit in _ this_ nation, thank you very much! 😉
Sooner or later someone over there is going to say, “Enough.” When they do I’ll be glad I’m well out of the way.
Jim
That’s when they start putting the Guy Fawkes masks on. 😀
Their gun laws are already very severe, and have been for a long time. Near as I know, you have to get shotguns firmly registered, pistols and real rifles are right out, and one of the only guns you can legally own with no problem is the anemic “Rook Rifle” for shooting blackbirds with very small short-range bullets…that make a .22 caliber rifle look like a .50 caliber sniper rifle by comparison.
They really are shooting their future infantry in the foot by doing this, as you can literally picture recruits for the British army never having even seen, much less fired, any sort of a firearm when they are inducted into the military.
Ah, for the good ol’ days of Henry VIII, when it was a legal requirement that all male adults were forced to get competent with a longbow for a couple of hours after each Sunday’s church service, or be fined.
More on that here:
http://www.loweringthebar.net/2010/06/do-englishmen-still-have-to-show-up-for-longbow-practice.html
Who _wouldn’t_ want to show up for that? It’s bound to be a lot of fun, with a lot of ale consumed after the weekly practice session. 🙂
BTW, last known military use of the of the longbow was in WWII, when a group of British commandos had to eliminate a German sentry silently during an attack on the French coast.
I always wondered what he thought in the last few seconds of his life as the expert British longbowman with them drilled that arrow right through his heart.
I imagine it was something like: “Shit, we should have listened to the French about these guys…oh…that really, really, hurts…” 😀
I never got did shot in the ass with a BB rifle like Lileks did:
http://www.lileks.com/institute/funny/comicads/guns/index.html
I got shot in the stomach with one, and had to go to the hospital to get the BB removed from under the skin and saved as police evidence after it went “clink” on falling into the metal pan.
Okay, some people’s kids react to having crab apples bounced off of their house roof via a PVC blowgun worse than others, but I still think that was a bit out of line and an excessive escalation of the situation. 😀
The Army cadets are aged from 12 to 18. For the sort of display which they were to give they would have used a completely deactivated drill rifle.
http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Drill Purpose Rifle
Mike
The UK signed some sort of agreement not to use “children soldiers, it says. Seems to me that those kids at the festival were cadets being prepared to go into formal military training. That’s not the same thing as being soldiers.
“The UK signed some sort of agreement not to use “children soldiers, it says. Seems to me that those kids at the festival were cadets being prepared to go into formal military training. That’s not the same thing as being soldiers.”
It’s PC. You expect it to make sense?
Good point, Brianna. It’s been a tough weekend for me; I’m just not focused well, right now.
Something the Brits need to keep in mind is that this is not the attitude that won back the Falklands or fought WW2. This is the attitude that had that clown announcing “peace in our time!” while the other side was gearing up to destroy the country. Sleep well, Britain.
Mike wrote:
“The Army cadets are aged from 12 to 18. For the sort of display which they were to give they would have used a completely deactivated drill rifle.
http://reference.findtarget.com/search/Drill Purpose Rifle ”
The way that link works takes you to an article on drills as tools.
This could be a whole new approach to combat weapons by the British military… picture the Argentinians going a little funny in the head again and re-invading the Falkland Islands.
From the sky descend the British SAS commandos…then a strange raspy whirring sound fills the air as three hundred chainsaws are simultaneously started, and the Argi’s flee in terror. 😉