18-21 YR OLD YOUTH NO LONGER WANTED IN BSA!
GUN OWNERSHIP TO FALL AS CREWS SUFFER LOSS!
by Dave "Rosey" Rosenthal, Black Wire Media Editor in-Chief
Sunday July 12, 2020 www.cnjfo.com/join-us
Did you know that there's GIRLS in the Boy Scouts being taught how to safely handle & shoot all three popular firearm platforms? Did you know that the females in the scouts OUTSHOOT their male counterparts (in most cases)? Co-Ed BSA Venturing Crews (not Troops) have "specialties" that they are chartered with, and SHOOTING CREWS of Venturing Scouts exist all over New Jersey and the USA. Ages for scouts in Crews runs up until the youth reach 21, unlike the traditional Boy Scouts where you "age-out" at 18. This allows dedicated adult volunteers the time to help those young women & men desiring to be gun owners themselves in filling out the application(s) when they turn 18, the minimum age to buy long guns in most states!
The BSA Venturing program is the only one of its kind in America, and goes way beyond 4-H in regards to firearms training. The Girl Scouts offer no firearms programming whatsoever. A little-known secret of sorts is that the adult volunteers attached to Venturing Crews are allowed to do HAND GUN instruction and not merely use rifles & scatterguns. They hold NRA credentials and can award certificates to the 18-21 year old Crew members. In "free America" these certificates qualify the bearer to apply for & receive CARRY PERMITS in states where proficiency is stipulated on the application!
With this announcement printed herein comes the inevitable loss of youth applying for & obtaining firearm purchasing "PERMISSION", which can be used their entire lifetimes. Life will "get in the way" even more than it does already. College, trade school, employment to make ends meet all take their toll as it is. This is just another nail in the coffin of gun ownership in our great country. A small nail, but a nail nonetheless.
Lack of support by the Boy Scouts due to insurance costs of maintaining a co-ed program in today's lawsuit-rich environment, combined with loss of program income due to Covid and other serious factors, has resulted in this (to this writer) reprehensible but little-advertised decision.
The Boy Scouts of America is under tremendous pressure these days to just stay afloat. We get it. Bankruptcy filings created by past decades of unchecked alleged sexual abuse has brought the program to its knees. Can the BSA survive? Only time will tell.
EDITOR's NOTE:
As a Shootist, Rosenthal has mentored hundreds of youth in his lifetime, starting with the local Troop his son Andy joined.
Running Turkey Shoot fundraisers where the boys used his shotguns to shoot the paper targets to determine the winners, assisting at scout camp with rifle & shotgun merit badges, and being a reference for multiple firearms permitting applications for Eagle Scouts he'd trained, "Rosey" has scouting in his blood. Last pheasant season he mentored 16 year old USPSA Grand Master static steel champion Emily Cutts on her first pheasant hunt.
His last self-assignment in scouting was an adult volunteer for a BSA Venturing Crew in Morganville, NJ that SHOOTS! Having witnessed the positive life experiences transferred to 18-21 year old women and men first-hand, he knows the value a firearms education brings to everyday life. Volunteering in scouting since his Eagle Scout crossed the bridge from Webelo's over 20 years ago, he's witnessed all the good that scouting teaches. Rosenthal believes elimination of the 18-21 age group in Venturing stymies gun rights education AND gun ownership.
