“Texas students shouldn’t lose instruction time for holding gun-shaped Pop-Tart snacks at school.” So intoned Texas Rep. Ryan Guillen by way of introducing his bill in the state legislature designed to roll back government school institutionalized hoplophobia. The kind that’s sanctioned, suspended and even expelled kiddies for pointing a pastry and saying “bang.” Or some paper. Or a piece of pizza. Or their fingers. So it’s come to this . . .
In order to counter the kind of zero tolerance stupidity cultural hacks like Shannon Watts and Michael Bloomberg have promoted in their attempts to stigmatize guns, making even things resembling them beyond the pale, states like Texas have to take matters into their own hands. As Florida has already done.
Besides, who could be against these kinds of knee-jerk, unencumbered-by-the-thought-process administrative over-reactions to kids being kids? Oh, wait.
“If I was voting today, I would vote against that bill,” (Sen. John) Whitmire said. While he has not read the legislation, the Houston Democrat said he would be reluctant to place any restrictions on local school officials to determine proper disciplinary procedures. Guillen’s legislation includes flexibility for a school to discipline a student who “disrupts learning” or causes harm or the fear of harm to an educator or another student.
“I believe strongly that common sense should be the guide,” Whitmire said. “I just think you have to, in my judgment, leave it to local administrators and school campus administrators to weigh the circumstances.”
Did you catch that? Whitmire hasn’t read the bill yet. He just knows he opposes it. That makes the Senator a prime candidate for federal elected office where you have to enact a bill to find out what’s in it.
The fight against reflexive anti-gun idiocy — countering the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex’s determined efforts to exclude firearms from polite society — is a long march. But it’s a journey worth taking. One step at a time.