Stop Gun Violence, Bring Your Parents' Gun to School

It’s hard not to wonder what the flash of brilliance looked like as it crossed filmmaker Rejina Sincic’s face with this idea for a public service announcement (PSA). Did she think, “I can make this a better world and reduce gun violence in schools and communities by teaching children to steal their parents’ guns and bring them to school”?

What this activist did achieve, is to create a teachable moment for children and adults alike.

The video, now mysteriously marked as private on YouTube, depicts a young, middle-class boy who looks to be around 12 or 13. As he comes out of his basement, he peeks around the corner at, one can only presume, his mother. We find her curled up on a couch with a blanket and a book in her lap.

The boy then goes into her bedroom, pulls a handgun out of her dresser drawer, takes it to his room, and puts it in his school backpack. The next scene has him in a very small, diverse classroom. To highlight his responsible nature and mature insight, he waits until all his other classmates leave the room.

The polite young man then presents his mother’s gun to his startled, elderly teacher. He then utters the first, and only, line in the entire video:

Can you take this away? I don’t feel safe with a gun in my house.

Let’s start with theft — remember, just because it belongs to your parents doesn’t mean it belongs to you. Taking a gun onto school property. Carrying a concealed weapon. Possession of a firearm by a minor. Endangerment of a minor — now multiply that one by how many kids are in the school. Don’t worry, everyone isn’t going to come up with the same answer.

I’m sure this list could easily grow if watered liberally by a zero tolerance policy — double that if he’s caught before it lands on the teacher’s desk.

But then again, this is a progressive fantasy, so I’m sure the school administrators would consider this as innocent as an apple. Let’s not get into the wussification of this young man, who doesn’t “feel safe” in a house with his mother in one room and a gun in another. That’s another post.

The vision Sincic is trying to sell us on is “our children deserve a safe world.” How can anyone argue with that? Which presents us with a fine lesson for adults.

Following Sincic’s lead, I thought I’d give storytelling a shot as well.

A little girl, about 10 years old with auburn hair and hand-me-down clothes, sits on the couch, holding a video game controller with two hands. The phone on the coffee table breaks her concentration as it rings. 

It just keeps ringing and ringing. The vibration of the phone walks it to the edge. Just as it begins to fall, the little girl jumps up to answer it. As she lifts the phone it stops ringing, displaying the phone’s “wallpaper”– stunned, her eyes lock onto the picture on the screen. She then runs down the hall with the silenced phone in her hand.

The next scene shows this same little girl putting the phone into her backpack, just before she dashes out of the door to catch the school bus.

She waits until her classmates have all gone out to the playground. Usually shy and quiet, the little girl surprises her male teacher as she approaches his desk. His smile melts into confusion when she hands him the phone.

As he looks at the front screen, she utters the only words spoken,

Can you take this away? I don’t feel safe when my mommy’s boyfriend looks at bad pictures.

Wait. What? You don’t want anyone peering into your thought life? Now we’ve gone too far? And yet, child pornography is illegal–and a devastating scourge on the face of our culture.

Both of these stories, while coming from different moral perspectives, have one common denominator that make their message worse than social issues they are trying to highlight.

 The lesson for parents is that our children do not deserve a safe world.

They deserve our protection. There is no such thing as a safe world. The world is a very dangerous place. It’s filled with evil and good. Not only that, but more often than not, evil portrays itself as good, beautiful and kind. Just like this film aimed at children.

In spite of the progressive hype and hysteria to the contrary, there are more safe, loving families than not.

I don’t feel safe with a gun in my house.

There are two fatal flaws in progressive parenting, both of which are highlighted in the one sentence.

First, elevating the feelings of an adolescent to a level of importance where the rights of others are trampled.

Second, the child does not own a house. It’s not his house. He has neither the maturity level nor the ability to secure a loan. He is, in fact, still a child under the care and protection of responsible adults. The vast majority of the contents of the house he claims are his actually belong to others.

He owns nothing, yet believes he is entitled to dictate, and steal from the very people that make his life entirely possible.

PJ Media’s own Bill Whittle recently explained just how progressives use story to advance their agenda. That’s often the weapon of choice in the war over America’s cultural values, along with “doing it for the children.” Here we see both.

One may wonder why it is that someone could make such an absurd film so void of common sense and present it as a public service.

The answer is simple.

The progressive crusade trampling down western values is about vision– not truth. The anti-gun activist’s vision is creating a world without sin, by redefining evil–and eradicating it through the strength of government.

Thomas Sowell explains in The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy,

What all these highly disparate crusades have in common is their moral exaltation of the anointed above others, who are to have their very different views nullified and superseded by the views of the anointed, imposed via the power of the government.

When progressive activists like Sincic push the long arms of government through the sleeves of fiction to capture the mind of a child, just remember: the only real barrier they face is you.

*****

Photo Credit Shutterstock: Patrick Foto