Rolled Out On: 4/4/2008 3:01 PM

In her defence she's only in 6th grade. I've seen far worse papers written by College students, and when I was that age the media was ramping up for the Clinton Assault Weapon Ban, and I thought it was a great idea....I thought it was a great idea and I didn't even know what "Semi-Automatic" meant. (I assumed Burst Fire, since I knew what "Automatic" was, and just self-loaded didn't seem like such a big deal, so all that media fuss must have been about somthing more.)

I became pro-gun when I relized all I thought I knew, and had been taught was bullshit, and I had to essentially relearn everything I thought I knew about the subject.

So on that side, I'm curious if we may have opened some eyes. For that age she's definetly smart enugh to research up the subject and probably apply good critical thinking.

We'll see

Rolled Out On: 4/4/2008 3:38 PM

Thanks for the link!

I've posted a follow-up to this. Had I known she was a 6th grader, the spanking would have been less harsh. I make the error of assuming those I am commenting or posting to are adults or near-adults with theoretically fully developed reasoning skills.

If she sees through the bullshit, as Beard points out, she'll be better off than the vast majority of students in this country. Which would serve her well later in life.

I'm feeling a little ashamed of myself. In hindsight, we did come down a little hard on her.

Rolled Out On: 4/4/2008 5:31 PM

We have to ask ourselves, is our children learning?

Rolled Out On: 4/4/2008 11:29 PM

Well she got a lot of very rational thought and facts thrown at her. With what we gave her she could do very high level debate for the progun side.

At her age most of her opinion are basically just absorbed by opinion by her family and school and friends. The problem is that children are brought up with idea that guns are bad. Then they get all the facts that supposedly back that up.

I have seen many comments from people that are in the reserve or are hunters or grew up in gun friendly families that do not want guns in general to be carried by people. The problem is that they may think they are capable, but that do not trust the general populace to use guns wisely. Considering some people we know, that is understandable.

Basically what one has to agree is that a free people have to be trusted with dangerous tools like guns. How many pro gun people feel that the populace should have access to TNT or dynamite or explosives in general. Well do you trust people with that stuff?

My father used all those explosives and was taught how to use them as a teenager. They used to hook up to natural gas when it was found near the town. Explosives were taught in chemistry. They learned how to make explosive flypaper.

The federal gov't used to put out pamphlets that gave instructions to farmers and others so this knowledge was used for productive purposes.

Now we are so scared of terrorists or idiots that no one can practice in order to learn. If we want to learn we must want it for bad reasons.

So her viewpoint is quite understandable.