if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803
You’ll Put Your Eye Out
by Lee
I fault the adults more than the kids.
Two eighth-graders who spent months working on a science project to prove how dangerous BB guns can be were disqualified from the state middle school science fair. The reason for the dismissal: BB guns are too dangerous.
Nathan C. Woodard and Nathaniel A. Gorlin-Crenshaw spent seven months researching and testing their hypothesis that BB guns can be deadly and should not be used by children.
The students spent about $200 on ballistics gelatin, which has the same density and consistency as human flesh, to use during their tests.
Nancy G. Degon, vice president of Massachusetts State Science Fair Inc. and co-chair of the middle-school fair, said fair rules prohibit hazardous substances and devices.
“The scientific review committee does not consider science projects involving firearms to be safe for middle school students,” Degon said.
This took place in Massachusetts. What do you want to bet that the parents of these kids are bleeding heart whining liberals nancyboys who wet themselves at the sight of a firearm. But I think their point is a valid one, that BB guns can be deadly, and that a lot of parents probably give them to their kids thinking they’re harmless. They should have been allowed to present it.
Why aren’t projects involving firearms appropriate? I think the whole point is that, with proper adult supervision, anything involving a firearm is appropriate. What’s inappropriate is the fact that these kids weren’t permitted to enter a completely legitimate project simply because of the preconceived politically correct idiocy of the science fair committee.
One related note: When I was in the 8th grade and we had the science fair, my friend Richard and I had the idea to get ahold of a copy of the Necronomicon and try and summon the Devil. We were going to get a video camera, set up a pentagram in the floor, the whole nine yards. But our science teacher heard us talking about it and told us no fucking way.
Comments
See, that was the interesting thing. Neither of us actually believed that anything was going to happen, that was kind of the point, to prove that it was bullshit. But when you’re 13 you still kind of have some of the residual “magical thinking” of your childhood, and we’d say, “Dude, what are we going to do if it works?”
Since when is a BB gun a FIRE arm.
When I was in the 8th grade and we had the science fair
Um, that’d be religion not science!!
Um, that’d be religion not science!!
No, Lee was just getting a young start on his ideas by attempting to quantify religion using science.
It was that, or being a Ghostbuster.
Maybe it’s good that I don’t have kids, but I don’t see bb guns as being so dangerous. Yeah, they’ll put your eye out if you shoot a bb in your eye, but a baseball bat or a steak knife or a bag of broken glass, if used in the wrong manner, are all at least as dangerous. When I was a kid (late 60s through whenever you deem the end of childhood to be) we all had bb guns. We had wrist rockets. We had lawn darts. I can’t count the number of times I got shot with the bb guns or wrist rockets or had lawn dart wars. Yeah, some blood was drawn and there were a few tweezer sessions to remove bbs from under the skin, but in the end no one really got hurt.
I’m not advocating these things and I am fully aware that we were all lucky we didn’t get seriously hurt. But that’s the fucking nature of being a kid. In fact, based on what I see going on these days, I think that it was a hell of a lot safer to be a bb gun toting kid in 1969 than a kid today. At some point people are going to have to step back and stop trying to demonize objects.
Can’t summon what doesn’t exist, but it would have been a good demonstration of that.
Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.
a baseball bat or a steak knife or a bag of broken glass
Rock in a sock!
But that’s the fucking nature of being a kid.
A comedian once said “You know why you can’t roll down your car’s rear windows all the way on a hot day? It’s so your kid can’t fall out! When *I* was a kid, we simply knew not to fall out of the windows, because if we did, we were the weakest link, goodbye!”
I can’t count the number of times I got shot with the bb guns or wrist rockets or had lawn dart wars.
Heck, by the time I was a kid, they’d pulled lawn darts off the market. So what did we do? We built forts in the big vacant lot behind our neighborhood and threw rocks at each other.
I’m also proud to be a part of the last generation not required to wear bike helmets. Sure, had to get stitches every other week and I got a few concussions, but...uhh...what was I saying?
If i recall correctly the Swiss went over to AIR RIFLES in the 1840’s as their primary arm.. they were LETHAL at 100+ yards, and fired a 42 cal ball....
SEAN according to the statics our generations should not have surived....
no car seats no helmets god, it was fun wasn’t it?
I actually did a 6th grade science fair project about ballistics. Science and a .357 magnum. I love this country!
I remember taking an actual Civil War rifle to school for “show & tell” as a kid...can you imagine the ruckus that would raise today?!
Everyone also drove their pickup trucks to school with their deer rifle and shotgun hanging in the gun rack in the back window. We’d usually go hunting after school got out.
My brother almost put his eye out with a piece of firewood… slipped on the lawn running towards the end of the yard and slid right into it.
I’m never letting my kids do any projects on logging.
Hunting’s cruel <ducks as bricks are thrown at him>
It is!
<ducks again>
I think air-rifles are banned in England…
Yeah, they’ll put your eye out if you shoot a bb in your eye, but a baseball bat or a steak knife or a bag of broken glass, if used in the wrong manner, are all at least as dangerous.
YES, but steak knives aren’t made for stabbing and baseball bats aren’t made for hitting. You can’t expect to give a kid a bb gun and not expect him to start shooting everybody.
What are your meant to do with a bb gun? Shoot cans? Pleaaaaase.
bb guns are dangerous, but so are swiss army knives and just about anything that can actually DO SOMETHING. The things that could actually do something were the coolest things when I was a kid. A knife, a baseball bat, a hammer. All these things are dangerous in the hands of an idiot or an unsupervised idiot.
Shall we dwell on the dangers of everything? The science fair thing stinks. They’re just picking on the BB gun because it’s a gun.
Funny...my science fair project in high school was a ballistics one, and I was allowed to do it (of course, I could only bring in pictures of the gun instead the actual gun, but I still got to do the project). Maybe it’s an age thing?
Don’t blame the liberals...I’m as yuppie as they come and I still like the right to bear arms (what big barrels you have! The better to shot your raping dick off).
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Good call on the part of your science teacher. Messing around with the Necronomicon can really fuck you up.