Tuesday, April 30, 2013

When is NRA a Bad Acronym?

Two Houston ISD elementary school principals are reconsidering whether an off-campus group can come to school over a two-day period and teach children about gun safety. No, not how to handle guns in a safe and responsible manner, but how to avoid touching them when they see one.
 
Which is a good idea on its face.
But the principals reconsidered their decision to hold the mini course for their pupils because they misunderstood that the off-campus group was not the MTA (Metropolitan Transit Authority) but the NRA (National Rifle Association).
And because the NRA has evolved into an extremist lobby group with political views way out of the mainstream of American opinion, once they heard the course was to be given by the NRA they begged off because they didn’t want it to look like they were making any endorsements of the NRA’s extremist viewpoint that universal background checks, supported by 80% of Americans, were non-starters.
I don’t know whether to jump up and down in glee over the NRA getting the cold shoulder from HISD principals because of their extremism, or anguish over the fact that school children will not receive training that when they see a gun they need to go the other way and tell an adult about it.
But I guess I’ll jump up and down because I hear that the district’s police department has a lesson plan on that one, too.

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