Patriotism: Much More Than Wearing a Gun on Your Head

What is it about guns that so fascinates or infuriates people, especially Americans? We have a 2nd Amendment that gets trotted out every so often defend or condemn a situation. We have a long history as a country of winning armed conflicts. Now, apparently, an 8-year-old boy can make a political statement by bringing toy guns to school — on his head.

Here's the story: The boy got all fired up about making something for a school project. The teachers said that all the projects should have a patriotic them. So the boy got some Army figures and glued them to a baseball cap. The cap was of a camouflage design, and the appearance of toy soldiers on top of a camouflage cap was surely patriotic, the boy must have thought. So he glued the soldiers on top of the hat and bill, put the hat on his head, and went to school.

Trouble was, the toy soldiers were holding guns. Now, I used to play with toy soldiers as much as the next little boy, and I can tell you that most of those soldiers were holding guns. These were soldiers who were or were going to be on the battlefield. Of course they would have guns! These little guys were maybe two inches tall, and it was always clear to me that not only were the soldiers not real but also the guns those soldiers were carrying were not real.

Such was the not the case with the superintendent of this boy's school.

Seems the boy got tossed out for bringing weapons to school, the weapons being the tiny guns held by the tiny soldiers atop the boy's school project.

The boy's situation became known to the head of the state National Guard, who went out of his way to present a special medal to the boy. What far? Why, for showing his patriotism, of course.

The story made the rounds of 24/7 media in which we now live, and the pressure must have really been put on the superintendent, for he recently announced that he would have a another at the school's weapons policy, to make sure that a similar occurrence wouldn't happen in the future.

It should also be mentioned that the school sponsors an Air Force Junior ROTC program and that the school district was very familiar with military matters.

All well and good, right? Not necessarily. There's still the matter of the "patriotism" displayed by the boy in the first place. One person's patriotism is a pro-gun policy; another person's patriotism doesn't involve guns at all. Surely the presence of a gun isn't required to display love for one's country? Soldiers who go to war to defend their country are definitely putting their lives on the line. Those who die have indeed given their "last full measure of devotion." But those are symbols of the belief in one's country and its preferred way of life, not the sole ends that justify the means. Let's take a step back here and think about what it means to be a patriot. Surely it's not so simple as carrying a gun.