Big Lake. Big Litter-Storm.

The fastest-growing school sport in Minnesota today is trap-shooting.  All over greater Minnesota, even into the outer Metro, trap teams are popping up, and drawing all kinds of students into the shooting sports.  The growth in terms of numbers and percentage is overwhelming; we’ve got regular commenters on this blog who can go into the specifics, but it’s been pretty meteoric over the past five to ten years.

But they never promised us a rose garden, as they say.

The Big Lake school district is refusing to allow the Big Lake High School Trap Team’s official team photo into the school’s annual for this year.

Because never mind the breakdown of the nuclear farmily, or a popular culture that glorifies violence to those who are least able to process what “violence” actually  is and who have no concept of the permanence of “mortality” (teenage boys), marketed with slick cynicism by a Hollywood advertising machine that has no soul.  And never mind the fact that Big Lake is well within the part of Minnesota that has a murder rate roughly half that of Norway.  Or the fact that while trap shotguns are, technically, weapons, the sport isn’t about violence – certainly nothing compared to the martial overtones and actual pummeling of high school football.

No.  Apparently photos of guns are enough to make people violent.

“It’s policy”, says the district – not allowing “weapons” into the yearbook.

Photo courtesy MNGOPAC

But a search of district policies shows nothing about weapons.   You can’t bring a gun to school (which may be why Big Lake has never had a school shooting?  I don’t know), but there is nothing in the district’s policy about pictures of skeet guns in the hands of a school-sponsored team that is participating in a legal, school sanctioned event.  

Anyway – the students on the trap team are doing their best to whip up a litter-storm of Biblical proportion, and I’m going to do my best ton contribute to it.

Polite, measured, reasonable phone calls and emails to be Athletic Director, the Principal and the Superintendent are in order.

As Breitbart said, politics is downstream of culture.   It’s battles like this – where the idiots of our society try to de-normalize conservative values – that are where the war for the culture take place every day…

…and where you and me can actually affect them.

I’m off to kick up that biblical litter-storm.

UPDATE:  They’re hearing us:

Big Lake School Board Chairman Mark Hedstrom told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS via email that he wants to see the trap team included in the yearbook.
“I have made a request to the superintendent to please add this item to (Thursday) night’s school board meeting agenda so the board can look at making an exception (to) this handbook guideline,” Hedstrom wrote.
The meeting starts at 6:30 p.m. Thursday in Big Lake.

Big Lake-ians (?), your mission is clear. Make sure your school board hears you.

Sometimes the voice of reason has to be louder than the voice of stupidity, ignorance and tyranny to be heard at all.

UPDATE 2:  In a statement redolent with “HOLY CRAP, MY EARS HURT”, Big Lake HIgh School has walked back its decision.  The picture will appear in the annual.

Thanks.  Good job.

Politics is downstream of culture.  The water downstream is a little more drinkable today.

23 thoughts on “Big Lake. Big Litter-Storm.

  1. Messrs. Westerberg and Dockendorf should take a long look at that photo.
    There are nearly 60 kids (w/at least 2 parents each) in that group which could rapidly translate into 120+ NO votes when the next school referendum shows up on the ballot. In a small community like that it doesn’t take too many people to sink a bond/tax levy.
    Maybe Westerberg and Dockendorf already have their exit strategies worked out, if not they need to focus on their own futures.

  2. Yet again the Schools show the zero tolerance outlook that allows no discussion, interpretation or nuance. And suddenly I realize why we have a large chunk of our population that can’t debate or even discuss issues. Everything has to be black OR white; left OR right; on OR off, and we must have “safe spaces” to guard against soul-crushing cognitive dissonance.

  3. NW,

    That’s another angle that I’ve been pondering a post about for a long time.

  4. Bureaucrats hate responsibility, because it eventually will result in backlash.

    If I must use intelligence guided by experience to form a professional judgment, it’s guaranteed someone will disagree with my decision, complain to the media, then sue the school and me along with it.

    If the school adopts a Zero Thought policy, my hands are tied. I have no discretion, no flexibility, no power to exercise discretion; and therefore no risk of being criticized or sued. I’m simply upholding the law.

    Of course, one might wonder why we need to pay such enormous salaries to people who have no responsibility, initiative, judgment or discretion, why we couldn’t hire minimum wage clerical temps to blindly follow policy, but that’s a different conversation.

    If we want to restore Order in society, we must have elected officials with backbone willing to stand up for the people who provide Order, whether that’s the school board telling SJWs that yes, the trap team’s photo goes in the yearbook while simultaneously telling a Mom Whose Life Matters that no, her son’s gangsta photo holding a pistol flashing gang signs, does not.

    And then we need judges willing to tell whiners to shut up and get the hell out of my courtroom.

  5. I have long maintained that liberals have zero internal consistency. They say we must have mandatory sex education in school so that children know they should not have sex until they are adults and able to handle those decisions responsibly. With guns we can’t possibly teach children about firearms usage because they can’t be trusted to use firearms responsibly. If there were any consistency in their views, I think they would teach children mandatatory firearms education.

    Can you say cognitive dissonance?

  6. I remember back when I was in 8th grade, every kid that I knew, including a lot more girls than one would have expected, took firearms safety training courses. These classes were taught in actual classrooms, inside actual public school buildings, with real guns, in pretty much every community in the state. Once we completed that five hour course, part of which included trap shooting, you received your MN DNR firearms carry permit. We were lucky, because we were able to do our shooting at the old Bloomington Richfield Gun Club, which was right across France Ave from Normandale CC. All that’s left of that, is the open area where the launcher dugouts were. At least people can shoot their bows there and Bloomington Parks & Rec still supplies new hay bales every year.

    Rhetorical question here, what the hell happened?!

  7. Moose and Boss – my oldest daughter attended a private school for several years. One year during “Love Week” (Valentine’s Day week) students 13 and older and their parents could participate in the 5-hour (spread over 5 nights) DNR firearms safety class. That Saturday we all went to the range for the qualification. It was a lot of fun and very educational.

  8. Voting administrators out sounds really enticing, but given that those same administrators can shut down the team completely, it’s one of those things that you’d have to keep under wraps until election year, I’d think.

    And watch out for the teachers’ unions after you do something. When I lived in/near Boulder, there were some conservatives who somehow got elected to the school board, and they really made an impact–gettting teachers their biggest raises in years by cutting the c**p, really. You would think that the NEA would have loved that, but no…..they got funding from the state and national level and went after those guys with a vengeance.

    End result; a town filled with professors and engineers only managed to get 25% of their students proficient in geometry. Nasty, nasty stuff, and a big part of why my family homeschools.

  9. The private sportsman/shooting club I’m a member of has a long history of supporting youth shooting sports, including financial and facility use for Zimmerman HS, Princeton HS, local 4-H and other groups. I haven’t heard where any of the schools wouldn’t allow team pictures in the yearbook with the athletes holding there guns. I was shocked when I saw that a Sherburne County (rural) school would take the action they have.

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  11. Sauk – Do I even want to know how the government came into possession of all of those? Some nice pieces in the list; I didn’t see any Ruger Mini 14s, which is something I’d like to have. They have a Taurus Judge, though, which I recommend as a home defense gun since it can chamber .410 shells (buck, bird or SD wads) and .45 Long Colt. You can load 3 shotgun shells for a “how do you do” w/o worrying about precise aim or over-penetration, and have two rounds of .45 to say, “I mean it” if necessary.

  12. NW, I think this is the MN-DNR annual confiscated/seized weapons and gear auction. Game Wardens can seize your gear for a wide range of violations although usually its hunting without a license or poaching or leaving a stand up on public land things like that. This auction tries to fly under the media radar so they don’t get a lot of snowflakes showing up to whinge about “putting guns back on the street”

  13. Sauk,

    Hadn’t heard that DNR would grab your gear for a stand built on public land. A few years ago, I saw some Illinois residents get everything taken for poaching deer. They were doing so at night, so that added to their misery.

  14. Note to self about keeping an eye peeled and a Saturday morning open this time next year.

    I see a couple of Remington 870 Wingmasters. I have a friend who has one, and would love another.

  15. bh
    in addition to the guns on the list there is a bunch of deer/tree stands –
    depending upon what state or what kind of public land (natl forest vs state park) you are on there is sometimes a restriction that you can’t leave the stand up over night so if you do the warden will ticket you and take your stand

    but yes there are a lot of ways to get your gear confiscated – drive an atv with .09 BAC in a state forest will get your gear confiscated and a DUI

  16. Ahhh, remembering the good old days in the CCCP. You could not graduate from high school unless you could field strip an AK-47 in an allotted time. And you had to pass a shooting trial too. If leftists are so intent to hold up the CCCP as the paragon of virtue and their ultimate goal, why do they diss arms so much? Cognitive dissonance? You bet!

  17. The APPEARANCE of a gun, a cigarette, a beer or a Bible is often enough to paralyze those whose lives are crafted around keeping controversy in a corral. Their righteousness is defined by the culture – which, when you look at the moral ambiguity of our culture, is a very scary thought.

  18. I remember Thursdays in high school were gun club days. Kids brought their rifles to school and stored them in their lockers!!!!

  19. The problems with school shootings have never been about the availability of guns. In my high school in southwestern Minnesota during the 70’s you could find all kinds of guns in the parking lot every day during the fall. My friends and I would hunt ducks and geese in the mornings. I’m sure there were 50-100 guns in vehicles every day. Odd thing though – physical fights were rare and nobody was ever shot.

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