Gun-free schools in America now training children as resistance militia forces armed with cans of soup

Wednesday, January 14, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: gun-free schools, child militias, soup cans

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(NaturalNews) The latest loony idea from "gun-free zone" advocates (who absolutely insist on making children a target in public schools by advertising the utter lack of armed defenses there) involves training children to function as school resistance militia forces using cans of soup as weapons.

I'm seriously not making this up.

See the letter from the principal of the W. F. Burns Middle School below, which explains all.

As the letter explains, instead of allowing responsible school administrators who pass FBI background checks to carry concealed firearms that could immediately take down active shooters who are endangering children, "gun-free zone" delusional thinkers want to turn classrooms of children into school militias of soup-wielding combatants trained to hurl Campbell's Soup cans at armed attackers.

This insanely stupid idea is described in a letter that has surfaced from the principal of the W.F. Burns Middle School in Alabama -- click here to see the letter for yourself (h/t to Buzzpo.com, links below) -- which states the school is now "enhancing our procedure for intruders."

This new procedure will involve "...arming our students with a canned food item."

It is never explained how a group of obese students who can't even toss a basketball into a hoop are supposed to nail the heads of attackers with pinpoint accuracy using aerodynamically-unstable soup cans. Will they be trained for it? Are America's middle schools seriously going to start their own home-grow militia defense training with students hurling soup cans to the audible commands of teachers screaming, "Achtung!"

For those who question the term "militia" here, the definition of a militia is a home-grown armed citizenry organized for the purpose of self-defense. That definition applies almost perfectly to the situation being covered here.

Indoctrinating children with yet more totally stupid ideas

The entire idea of these armed, soup-wielding militia defense forces boils down to the typical victimization mindset that's consistently advocated by wishy-washy bureaucrats who hate self-defense and self-reliance. The way this works, we are told, is that "The canned food item could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive. The canned food item will give students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters their classroom."

Feel free to vomit right now, if you wish. Yes, this is the feel-good emotional crap that government schools are force-feeding our children these days because apparently it's more important for children to feel good about themselves while they are being mass murdered than to really stop an armed attacker.

Where to even begin in dissecting the nonsense in all this? For starters, a typical police response time to an active shooter in a school is more than six minutes. During those six minutes, how many soup-hurling children might be shot by a crazed, armed intruder intent on causing mayhem and death?

The victimization psychology of school officials is obvious in the claim that this will somehow buy the students time "until the police arrive." Because as all obedient "gun-free zone" advocates know, only the police can be allowed to take responsibility for the defense of human life, right? The idea of allowing a responsible, well-trained teacher or school administrator to pack a pistol is abhorrent to these people even though it's the most sensible idea of all.

If you fly on commercial airlines, you are flying with a man who has a gun on the airplane

Everyone who flies on commercial airlines is sitting on a plane with precisely the same kind of armed person. They're called Air Marshals and they carry loaded guns onto airplanes for the purpose of stopping violence. The idea of an armed School Marshal is similarly well-founded, and School Marshals could be specially-trained and certified school administrators, coaches or teachers who pass background checks and receive exhaustive training on protecting children from active shooters.

But no, government school bureaucrats are so terrified of the physical object known as a gun -- which they foolishly think will magically just "go off" on its own, at random times -- that they can't fathom the idea that guns can be used to protect the lives of children.

That's why the police carry them, obviously. If guns weren't useful tools for stopping violence, then there is no point arming police in the first place. In fact, the entire reason school administrators call 911 is because they desperately want MEN WITH GUNS to arrive on the scene as quickly as possible and use those guns to stop violence.

Empowering students? Or getting them shot?

But my favorite part of this letter is how school administrators think teaching students to hurl cans of soup at armed attackers would "give students a sense of empowerment" and will "make them feel secure..."

Wow. Is this more touchy-feely fuzzy math being applied to an active shooter scenario?

As someone who is well trained in handgun combat tactics (as well as organic permaculture gardening, laboratory protocols, yoga and many other arts), let me explain something to the principal of the W. F. Burns Middle School. By training children to throw objects at an armed assailant, you are going to get more of these kids killed.

The only correct response by children to an active shooter scenario is for those children to evade, flee or hide.

The idea of recruiting these schoolchildren into some sort of Campbell's Soup army of adolescent resistance forces is wholly insane. Training children to confront armed attackers with cans of soup is dangerously irresponsible and wildly illogical. It's obvious the people who came up with this foolishness have no experience whatsoever with firearms or shooter scenarios. This focus on giving students a "sense of empowerment" with canned food will only get them killed.

It also brings up the obvious question: If children get killed while hurling Campbell's Soup cans during a firefight, will the Campbell's Soup company be sued for negligence in causing the death of the children? After all, if the soup is now being officially sanctioned as a "weapon," then won't some lawyer claim the soup can "malfunctioned" when it didn't knock out the intruder, leading to the death of some innocent children?

I can only imagine how frustrated the soup companies are going to be when they find out government schools are calling for their cans to be used as weapons of self defense even though cans of soup have never in the history of the world been demonstrated to have any defensive properties whatsoever. Pretty soon we're likely to see warning labels on the sides of soup cans stating something like, "NOT FOR USE as kinetic weapons against armed intruders."

Should police trade in their Glocks for Campbell's Soup cans?

The letter actually requests that parents "arm" their children with cans of food. "We are asking each student to bring an 8 oz. canned food item (corn, beans, peas, etc.) to use in case an intruder enters their classroom."

Now, I can understand the idea that most modern processed food is so toxic and laced with deadly chemicals that it might be harmful to EAT it. But hurling it as a kinetic weapon against an attacker wielding an AK-47, for example, is just stupid beyond belief.

If canned soup was so good at stopping attackers, then police would be armed with soup cans instead of Glocks.

I know a lot of cops. But I have never seen one carry a can of soup on their belt holster. I mean, yeah, cops will "go Batman" and carry more crap than you can imagine on their belt holsters, but even then, I've never seen one wearing soup.

Anyway, the children should be fleeing the attacker, not confronting him. So teaching them to "stand your ground" with a can of soup is a recipe for disaster.

Can children even throw soup with any force or accuracy?

The idea of recruiting schoolchildren into a local militia of armed resistance fighters is just whacko to begin with.

Have you ever witnessed a gym class of today's seventh graders? I'd be surprised if even 1 in 20 could hit a human head-sized target with a can of soup hurled across a classroom. Even if you hit the intruder, the most likely result of that is to just agitate him even more.

The loony idea being promoted by school administrators that "The canned food item could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive..." is based on the same sort of delusional thinking that government-run schools are training students to embrace in all other areas: economics, science, mathematics, writing proficiency, etc. Is it no wonder that most college students today can only read at a seventh-grade level?

To add another layer of "feel good" community-centric emotional progressivism to this entire pathetic scheme, the letter says, "At the end of the school year, the cans will be donated to the food closet."

Does that still apply if the cans have holes shot through them and are covered with the blood of students who died while trying to hurl them at armed assailants instead of fleeing the scene like they should have done?

I applaud the idea of keeping children safe, but training students to function as resistance militia forces with what are essentially stone-age kinetic weapons is one of the most outrageously dangerous and ill-conceived ideas I've ever seen come out of a public school. And there are some real whoppers competing with that title, such as the "New Math" or whatever it's called where it's more important for students to feel good about the process rather than arrive at the correct answer.

If you really want to keep children safe in schools, the solutions are not very complicated. Every modern society around the world has overwhelmingly concluded that the way to stop bad people with guns is to arm good people with guns.

This is the fundamental reasoning behind having police in the first place. Or Air Marshals. Or concealed carry holders who stop crime and stop violence without costing the government anything at all.

The way to keep children safe is to put firearms in the hands of trained, trustworthy adults at the schools who can respond immediately to armed intruders. Remove the ill-conceived "gun-free zone" signs, start a "School Marshals" training program, and let qualified, fully-vetted school administrators carry some heat for a change. And teach the students to hide, flee or evade.

Anything else is just plain stupid.

Shouldn't teachers also be armed with soup cans, too?

If you really want to see the lunacy of the "armed with a can of soup" idea, then ask yourself this question: If arming children with cans of soup is such a great idea, then why not arm the teachers with cans of soup, too?

Yep, this is the new school defense plan in the gun-free zones: Teachers armed with Pork & Beans, standing in school hallways, hurling GMOs and monosodium glutamate at violent terrorists, hoping for a lucky konk on the head that causes a six-minute window of unconsciousness during which the teachers can call 911 and wait for the cops to arrive so the cops can bring the guns into the gun-free zone.

You just gotta love the multiple layers of delusional thinking in this whole plan.

If it were really a gun-free zone, then why don't teachers and school administrators insist that the cops leave all their guns outside the school? Obviously it's not really a gun-free zone, because when there's trouble, they want men with guns to arrive as quickly as possible and bring their guns.

There are all sorts of other problems with this plan, as pointed out by Eric Reed of Buzzpo.com, who writes:

...this procedure raises many questions. What if the parents don’t have an 8 oz. can? If they send a 12 oz. can, is that an assault can? Should it be registered first? Will the students be required to keep their cans safely locked up until needed? And most importantly, before the cans are donated to the food closet at the end of the year, will they be properly disarmed first?

Tell these school administrators to stop endangering children with loony soup hurling ideas:

Principal Holley's email: [email protected]
Asst. Principal Bell's email: [email protected]

It's all a symptom of a broken, delusional society of people trained to think like victims

What I really see in this letter -- and the loony idea of recruiting students into a resistance militia of soup-hurlers -- is a symptom of a broken society where everyone is trained into a victimization-obedience psychological thought pattern.

One of the many disempowering things schools teach children is that they are subjects of a system that controls their thoughts, their beliefs, their behaviors and even their dietary choices. It is a natural extension of this indoctrination training to believe that you are helpless against armed assailants.

But this belief is a delusion. In reality, firearms are the great equalizers that empower even frail senior citizens with the ability to stop violence and protect children. A firearm can accomplish what a can of catapulted soup cannot: it can STOP the attacker almost instantly.

After all, if you're going to advocate kinetic energy as a tool to be used in schools to stop attackers, it's ridiculous to limit yourself to the kinetic weapons of the stone age. If you're going to use kinetic energy to halt an attacker, the obvious choice for delivering that kinetic energy to the intended target is a firearm in the hands of a trained adult. Or, I suppose, you could build Medieval catapults in each classroom and load them up with buckets of canned soup. That would make for an interesting physics class, but it wouldn't do much in terms of actual classroom defense.

The advantage of firearms is not just in the kinetic energy delivered to the target (Energy equals one-half of mass times velocity squared, remember?) but also shot placement. Most people trained on handguns can put a 9mm round into a six-inch diameter circle at 20 - 25 feet away without much difficulty. If the point is to stop the attacker, then why don't school administrators want to stop them as rapidly and accurately as possible?

Imagined conversation with terrorists

Here's how delusional school administrators imagine terrorists might talk about selecting which schools to shoot up.

Terrorist #1: How about we shoot up that middle school down on the corner of 5th street?

Terrorist #2: No, we can't. They've got a "gun-free zone" posted.

Terrorist #1: Dang.

Terrorist #2: Yeah, I know. It blows.

Terrorist #1: Well, what if we just ignore the sign?

Terrorist #2: Can we really do that? Isn't that against the rules?

Terrorist #1: What rules? We are planning a massacre, remember. I'm pretty sure that's against the rules.

Terrorist #2: Yeah, you might be right! We can just ignore the "gun-free zone" sign and walk right in there!

Terrorist #1: Oh, but hold on. There's another problem.

Terrorist #2: What?

Terrorist #1: That's the school that trained their students to throw soup cans!

Terrorist #2: Holy crap you're right. What are we gonna do now?

Terrorist #1: Man, I don't know. Those soup cans are full of soup.

Terrorist #2: Yeah, I buy them for lunch sometimes. How hard can they throw them?

Terrorist #1: Probably not very hard.

Terrorist #2: Why don't we wear football helmets?

Terrorist #1: That would look stupid.

Terrorist #2: Yeah but it would stop the soup cans from hitting us on the head.

Terrorist #1: Hmmm, okay let's wear football helmets. Where can we buy them?

Terrorist #2: Pretty much any sporting goods store...

Terrorist #1: Is it just the students with the soup cans, or do the teachers throw them too?

Terrorist #2: It's just the students. Teachers throwing soup cans would be stupid.

Terrorist #1: Yeah.

Terrorist #2: Can these students even throw very hard?

Terrorist #1: I don't think so. Most of them are too obese to even run.

Terrorist #2: Well, I was wondering if these soup cans are such good weapons, why don't WE use them?

Terrorist #1: What, and leave the AKs at home?

Terrorist #2: Well yeah, I mean maybe the soup cans are even better.

Terrorist #1: You're an idiot.

Terrorist #2: Sorry, I went to public school...

... and so on.

Here's the original letter from W. T. F. Burns Middle Schools

Click here for a scanned image. (H/t to Buzzpo.com)
Dear Parents and Guardians,

We are dedicated to educating and keeping our children safe at school. As a result of school shootings throughout the United States and discussing with law enforcement on the best procedure to follow to keep our students safe, we are enhancing our procedure for intruders.

The procedure will be the same as we have done in the past with the addition of arming our students with a canned food item. We realize at first this may seem odd; however, it is a practice that would catch an intruder off-guard. The canned food item could stun the intruder or even knock him out until the police arrive. The canned food item will give students a sense of empowerment to protect themselves and will make them feel secure in case an intruder enters their classroom.

This procedure is being used in other schools in our area and in the United States. Please view the following websites listed below for more information on this procedure.

http://www.cchsvoice.org/equipped-with-cans-...

http://www.lakegenevanews.net/Articles-Genev...

We are asking each student to bring an 8 oz. canned food item (corn, beans, peas, etc.) to use in case an intruder enters their classroom. We hope the canned food items will never be used or needed, but it is best to be prepared. At the end of the school year, the cans will be donated to the food closet.

Thank you for your support in helping us keep our children safe at school.

Sincerely,

Priscella P. Holley, Principal

Donna M. Bell, Assistant Principal