Scouting And Shooting...

 Well, there's one I didn't see coming on a Friday afternoon.

I am fairly insulated these days when it comes to news.  I check the CNN web site several times a day for news.  It is not my only source.  I check two local television stations, the local newspaper, and keep my eyes open.  I look at television news occasionally.  Most of the time I try to catch the local news, but overall, I expect I'm at least reasonably well informed.  

I'm not plugged in all day.  During my working hours, I do have a television going.  It's behind me, and tuned to one of the all-music channels offered by my cable system.  It provides light background noise, covering the creaks and cracks of the house around me (and me, moreso, these days), but it is not distracting.  I don't need it.  I have enough to focus on, I need to pay attention.

But today, reviewing the CNN site, I found this article.  And there are a few concerns which I have.

At the beginning of the article it notes that a young Scout was shot at a Scout Camp in Hawaii back on August 28.  As I read through that first paragraph, there were so many red flags that popped up that I couldn't get through the rest of the article without saying "but wait".

Well, I suppose I should get those out of the way first.  To the best of my knowledge, which is still pretty extensive, it is absolutely forbidden unless you have otherwise obtained approval from the proper authorities, to bring a personal firearm onto any scouting property.  That is, it is forbidden for you to bring a firearm onto a property owned in part or in whole by the Boy Scouts of America.  The sole exceptions to this rule are if you are a trained and credentialed law enforcement person, or have obtained permission from the proper authorities.  Those proper authorities are, to the extent of my knowledge, the local Chief Scout Executive.

And here we go.  Scouting is organized into geographic groups called councils.  Each council is run by a full-time professional who bears the title Chief Scout Executive.  He is the adult who is in charge of the professional - that is, paid - adults, and guides and certifies the adult volunteers who assist with the program.  That is, as the Chief, he is responsible for a small group of paid professional people who are responsible for insuring the paperwork is done, properly filed, and the folks who are potentially the most important AFTER the Chief Scout Executive are the District Scout Executives.  These are professionals, usually young men AND women, who as their day job travel about to various Scouting events and scouting people and insure the program is being delivered properly.

These people are augmented by, at Scout-run facilities, staff who are trained and responsible for that particular location.  I'm fortunate in that, when I was heavily involved in the local Scouting community, that we had something like seven Scout Camps, which was property owned by the local Scouting Council, used and usable by all Scouts in this, and other councils.  Two of these facilities are considered "Summer Camps" - they are large properties with full-time staff year round to maintain the facilities, and they are often usable at least in part all year round.  Another five properties in the local council were available for individual troops to use portions of, or groups to come together and use more of the property.  

On a number of occasions I was able to attend, with my son's unit, many of these sites.  In fact, I had been to all but two of the properties while my son was a Scout.  Many of the properties had archery and firearm ranges.  Some had several.  And the rules were always the same.  At the edge of the property, there were signs once again advising you that firearms were not permitted to be carried into the grounds.  Period.

There were a number of events we attended that focused on firearms.  And there were a few events which we even organized that focused on firearms.  And I've been through training to run firing lines.  And I don't ever want to do it.  But I'll get into that later.

The point I'm trying to make here up top is that the initial event that ended this poor boy's life occurred when an adult - a full-grown adult - brought onto a restricted property a firearm without permission.  Period.  Full stop.  

But wait, I hear a couple of you screaming, I'm making assumptions!  Nope.  Not even hardly.  For, you see, I've been through the training and I know the rules.  And I can tell you in the sentence "A police investigation determined that during an official Boy Scouts of America (BSA) event at a scout camp rifle range, the boy was accidentally killed after he was shot by another unsupervised boy who was handling his parent’s loaded semi-automatic assault rifle." There are a couple of big problems.

Problem the first - a weapon was brought onto the Scout Camp which was not properly secured.  How do I know that?  It's a simple phrase - "another unsupervised boy".  Bang zoom full stop.  If weapons are present at a Scout Camp, they are locked in a secure vault when not in use.  Weapons that are ready to be used or in use on a range are being used by Scouts or guests who are supervised by trained adults and range officers who are attentive to the action on the line the entire time the line is engaged in firing their weapons.  

So if a boy was handling a weapon that was not under the control of the range officers, while the local Scouting Council needs to bear the responsibility of the consequences of the actions of those present, the responsibility for the actions remain 100% on the person who fired the weapon, and on the person who provided the weapon.

So right here at the top, yes, Scouting is responsible for not clearly and fully educating the participants of this event, and for failure to properly supervise people who were participating.  Mind you, in a Scout Camp that can cover hundreds or thousands of acres, it's tough to have eyes everywhere.  Which is why Scouting relies so heavily upon adult volunteers.  And which is why the volunteers failed the program in this case.

I will tell you that if I had been at that event, and an adult produced a firearm of their own, the first words out of my mouth would be "cease fire, weapons down, safeties engaged, please."  Once I had confirmed that had been done, I would ask another adult to immediately find a staff representative to come quickly and review what was going on.  If that weapon was not placed on the ground or a table immediately, it would have been my responsibility to immediately evacuate everyone in the area, starting with the Scouts, until they were removed to a range where the firearm was no longer a danger to them.  

How do I know that?  Because that's what I was taught.  Firearms must be treated as always loaded, always ready to fire, even if the bolt is open, the chamber appears empty, and no one is near the weapon.  A rather long time ago, I was told by an individual who saw it happen that an instructor who was attempting to demonstrate a black-powder weapon had a weapon discharge downrange by accident due to a magnifying glass.  He'd brought the large glass to permit Scouts to see the details of the ball before and after it had been fired, and the powder.  He'd hung the gear on a nail on the firing line, and the sun happened to strike the glass in an unanticipated way, causing the focus of the beam to come to rest on a weapon that he'd laid on the line, unaware it was loaded.  

Yes, this fault lies with the instructor for a number of reasons, but he did point the weapon's barrel down range, so that when it discharged, it fired into an earth berm erected, as many are, to provide a sort of "bathtub" to insure rifle shots do not extend beyond a controlled environment.  For a few years, I participated in service projects as a youth, bringing fallen branches and brush to add to the pile which was, on later campouts, added to the pile of the brush and earth surrounding the firing range.  

In an example of exactly how paranoid we were, no one was allowed within a mile of the firing range in the downrange side.  The land was undeveloped, heavily wooded, and no one was permitted in the area when weapons were unsafed on the range.  Which is the term we used if even one weapon was not locked in the gun safe on the range, or in the vault during times when the range was not properly staffed.  That's right, weapons were moved, unloaded, from the range to a centrally located heavy locked vault when they weren't in the gun safe on the range.  

So we took care.  We didn't let people bring their own weapons on to Scout Camp Grounds.  Period.

Does that mean we never took chances?  No.  It means that, thanks to the fact that we had a fellow who was a fully trained and certified range officer (which I was not), we did organize and obtain permission to hold on private land a shooting camp weekend.  The property we used was fairly perfect, because rather than have a purpose-built firing range, we had geography on our side.  We had high hills surrounding the site where our firing range was located, and we did have our own range constructed.  Scouts fired weapons into a hill, which was mostly brush and "duff" covered, so there were no chances of rounds ricocheting around or back at them.

So now that we've gotten all that stuff out of the way, I'm sure there are people who are saying "But why let the boys play with guns?  Isn't that too dangerous?"  Yes, it is dangerous.  And the most dangerous thing out there is an uneducated individual who encounters a firearm.  Because, as previously noted, all firearms are dangerous, are loaded and ready to fire, and are not safe, even if the safety is engaged, the bolt is open, and the clip (if it has one) is removed.

For at least the thousand times someone checks and insures a weapon is safe, there's one where they missed something.  And that's why someone dies.  So if we teach the youth that the weapon is always dangerous, they may chose to avoid it and alert an adult that there's a danger.  At the very worst, someone might pick up the weapon and discharge it.  If they presume the weapon is always loaded, even if it appears it isn't, and they take the precautions such as pointing the weapon towards the ground, away from people, and keep their hand away from the trigger, the odds of someone getting accidentally shot go way, way down.  

And those guidelines were not followed in this case.  How do I know?  Well, there was a Scout who was shot by someone handling a weapon.  If he'd followed those guidelines, the bullet which discharged from the weapon might have caused someone an injury, maybe damage to their eyesight, but unless he hit a rock and the bullet ricocheted back at someone else, the kid would still be here. 

So there's that.  And I get it.  Guns, right now, are a big thing.  I don't like them.  I don't own one, I do not wish to own one.  To own a gun is to be tempted to use a gun, and the statistics show that more people are killed by "misadventures" with weapons than they are because they intended to kill someone.  But I don't see weapons like guns going away any time soon.  Which is why I am all in favor of education.  And regulation, yes, because I think there are far too many idiots who own guns because, well, they're afraid.  And I get it.  But the bottom line is that if we do not teach people how to safely handle guns, they will pick up semi-automatic assault rifles, think they're fun toys, and then 11-year old boys will end up dead because someone else made a mistake.  

And I can't even begin to figure out who is going to suffer more in that horrible equation.  There's the family who lost their son, there's the boy who killed someone by accident, and there's a gun owner who very obviously should have his rights to own any firearms at all revoked in perpetuity because he clearly does not know how to handle or respect weapons.  Before you say anything to attempt to counter that, I'll point to the death of the young boy Scout as an example of his stupidity.

So that's how my weekend's starting.  How about yours?