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.”
If a student utter those words in school they’d likely be hauled to the principal’s office, the police called and probably even arrested, and who knows strip searched. But when it is an Explorer Program in conjunction with Federal Government police agencies, why no worries.
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.”
Yeah that’s nice. Nothing like showing young kids how to apply violence to others.
In a competition in Arizona that he did not oversee, Deputy Lowenthal said, one role-player wore traditional Arab dress. “If we’re looking at 9/11 and what a Middle Eastern terrorist would be like,” he said, “then maybe your role-player would look like that. I don’t know, would you call that politically incorrect?”
I’d call it stupid. Did the 9/11 hijackers wear traditional Arab dress or did they dress like your average American citizen?
Oh well who needs things like cross country skiing, winter weather survivial and moutain climbing. Now we can have paramilitary training.
