6 thoughts on “Child Abusers”

  1. I was reading a little more about Malik Hall, the kid who had his gun taken away.

    Malik Hall, a round-eyed second-grader, looked apprehensive as he stood in line with his favorite toy, a thick, blue gun with plastic sword underneath the muzzle. The 8-year-old was furious when his mother, Amanda, told him he would have to give it up. Yesterday morning, he tried to hide it under his pillow, she said.

    “I’m worried,’’ she said. “He might cry.’’

    But when it was his turn, Malik strode dry-eyed and with quiet dignity to the Bash-O-Matic and fed it the gun. When his mother approached, he said nothing.

    “You don’t want to talk to me?’’ Hall asked. He looked at her stonily and left to retrieve his gift.

    Hall said she had no regrets. The 26-year-old mother of six said she has been trying to wean her only son off toy guns for years. In kindergarten, he brought a pop gun to school and shot at a classmate when the child refused to return his toy truck.

    The police and representatives of the state’s children services department rushed to the school, and the boy was expelled.

    “He had it in his pants like a gangster,’’ Hall said. Yesterday, she had six other of his guns to feed the Bash-O-Matic, but she admitted she had let Malik keep one, a small pistol that shoots rubber targets.

    “I mean, he is a boy,’’ she said.

    So this kid is emulating gangsters and shooting fellow students with his toy guns while he’s in kindergarten? And the mother is only 26 years old? Let me guess. There’s a mother of six here, but not a father of six. This behavior seems to indicate a lack of male role models. Plus I get an unsettled sense of prison from this story. You almost expect the parents to turn over their childrens’ rooms next, looking for shivs or drugs.

    Even if you ignore the consequences of bad decisions, it’s clear to me that this is a different world. Maybe if you’re raising up gangsters, you need to maintain a weapon-free zone just for your survival. But I don’t see why the rest of us need to be a part of that sick world. And that was a real classy response from the school and state. Expel a kindergarten student for brandishing a toy gun?

    Frankly, it sounds to me like the school system is a gangster training ground and they’re running damage control to reduce state liability. She and her family would probably be better off, getting out of that part of Providence. Beats trying to deal with the symptoms rather than some of the causes.

  2. “Some parents confessed that they bought guns just a couple of days before the event so their children could get a gift or watch the Bash-O-Matic do its work.”

    One more brilliantly conceived government program.

  3. The “powerful message” actually being conveyed to the kids by their parents is this: “We own your ass.” It’s the oldest message, dressed up as usual in the current fashionable delusions. When I was a kid it was “it’s for your own good.” Now it’s “we just don’t want you to be violent.” Uh huh.

  4. And the mother is only 26 years old? Let me guess. There’s a mother of six here, but not a father of six.

    Truth, and since it is politically incorrect to talk about the source of youth violence, that is fatherlessness and the political camp that fosters it, they instead must project/transfer their grievance onto inanimate objects like guns.

  5. I dunno, Karl. Even if he was carrying it “like a gangster” (whatever that’s supposed to mean… do they make concealed-carry holsters for toy guns? How else is he supposed to carry it other than in his waistband?), someone took his property, refused to give it back, was warned, and then was shot. Sounds like the person who took his truck got what they deserved.

    Instead, the school system saw fit to expel the shooter, teaching both parties that you have no right to defend your own property, and that it’s okay to take things that aren’t yours.

    Regardless of the parental status in that particular household, or the reasons behind it (maybe Dad is in Iraq or A’stan right now?), the message sent to the kids was “the State decides what rights you have, and they’ve decided that you have none.”

    IMHO, of course.

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