For the Fatherland.

14 years ago
The Boy Scouts now have SWAT program.

The training, which leaders say is not intended to be applied outside the simulated Explorer setting, can involve chasing down illegal border crossers as well as more dangerous situations that include facing down terrorists and taking out "active shooters," like those who bring gunfire and death to college campuses. In a simulation here of a raid on a marijuana field, several Explorers were instructed on how to quiet an obstreperous lookout.

"Put him on his face and put a knee in his back," a Border Patrol agent explained. "I guarantee that he'll shut up."

Cathy Noriego, also 16, said she was attracted by the guns. The group uses compressed-air guns -- known as airsoft guns, which fire tiny plastic pellets -- in the training exercises, and sometimes they shoot real guns on a closed range.

"I like shooting them," Cathy said. "I like the sound they make. It gets me excited."

You're going to be the most popular mom in the trailer park, Cathy.

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17 Responses:

  1. latemodel says:
    14 years ago at 11:50 am

    I was gypped. We never got to raid pot fields when I was in the scouts.
  2. specialagentm says:
    14 years ago at 11:51 am

    Somehow I doubt these Explorers will survive their first encounter with an "obstreperous lookout". I know these are crazy kids with pocket knives (and they're not afraid to use them!), but I wouldn't wager on their odds against a drug gang lookout with an AK and an itchy trigger finger.
  3. jcheshire says:
    14 years ago at 12:00 pm

    Remember: the Boy Scouts were originally created by Lord Baden-Powell as a volunteer extension to the military.
    • mouseworks says:
      14 years ago at 5:18 pm

      Remember, Lord Baden-Powell was very upset that when he invaded, the Ashantee didn't fight back but surrendered (except they hid the symbol of their high kings and didn't bring it out of hiding until the British left about 80 years later). He wrote about the invasion to tell the liberals back home how glorious breaking up the Ashantee empire was since public opinion at the time appeared to have been more negative than the public opinion about the invasion of Iraq.

      The Ashantee royal lineage waited the white guys out.

      Baden-Powell was most put out that he lost men to evil African diseases and not glorious battle.

      Baden-Powell's sexuality, like J. Edgar Hoover's, might have been less kinked if he could have been more open about it.
  4. strspn says:
    14 years ago at 12:57 pm

    How depressing. Thank goodness the kids aren't all like that.
  5. retardotron says:
    14 years ago at 1:14 pm

    I'm confused... is she trailer trash because she likes guns, or because she's training to be the next generation of scary over-reaching government influence that demands to see your proof of citizenship 100 miles inside the U.S. border?
  6. lionsphil says:
    14 years ago at 1:35 pm

    'Up with your hands!' yelled a savage voice.

    A handsome, tough-looking boy of nine had popped up from behind the table
    and was menacing him with a toy automatic pistol, while his small sister,
    about two years younger, made the same gesture with a fragment of wood.
    Both of them were dressed in the blue shorts, grey shirts, and red
    neckerchiefs which were the uniform of the Spies. Winston raised his hands
    above his head, but with an uneasy feeling, so vicious was the boy's
    demeanour, that it was not altogether a game.

    'You're a traitor!' yelled the boy. 'You're a thought-criminal! You're a
    Eurasian spy! I'll shoot you, I'll vaporize you, I'll send you to the salt
    mines!'

    Suddenly they were both leaping round him, shouting 'Traitor!' and
    'Thought-criminal!' the little girl imitating her brother in every
    movement. It was somehow slightly frightening, like the gambolling of
    tiger cubs which will soon grow up into man-eaters. There was a sort of
    calculating ferocity in the boy's eye, a quite evident desire to hit or
    kick Winston and a consciousness of being very nearly big enough to do so.
    It was a good job it was not a real pistol he was holding, Winston thought.
  7. wisn says:
    14 years ago at 2:23 pm

    WOLVERIIIINES!
  8. danl2620 says:
    14 years ago at 2:42 pm

    Explorers are not Boy Scouts. The Explorer Scouts have always been a quasi -training program for law enforcement, and this doesn't seem different. Maybe a little ambitious, but not really different.
  9. substitute says:
    14 years ago at 4:39 pm

    S.W.A.T. teams are perfect for teenagers. We just need the adults to quit it and stop making us all pay for their toys.

Comments are closed because this post is 14 years old.