Whiny child will be an adult Tory, says study

From today's independent.

By David Usborne in New York
Published: 24 March 2006

Depending on your political predilections, you have double reason to be worried if you find your school-age child tends to be the whiny, sit-at-the-back-of-the-class kind. You had better get the child's confidence level up a notch or you may have a future conservative in your nest.
A study by Professor Jack Block of the University of California at Berkeley should be sufficient warning. He has been specialising in this area for years and his conclusions are clear: the boys and girls who are resilient, smooth and sure of themselves end up liberal in their older years.
The research, in the latest Journal of Research into Personality, does not exactly say that Dick Cheney, the Vice President, must therefore have been the most tiresome wimp in school. Or that Al Gore won the school popularity contest. But it comes close. "The whiny kids tended to grow up conservative, and turned into rigid young adults who hewed closely to traditional gender roles and were uncomfortable with ambiguity," the professor found after selecting 90 children for his experiment and following their development over two decades to adulthood.
"The confident kids turned out liberal and were still hanging loose, turning into bright, non-conforming adults with wide interests. The girls were still outgoing, but the young men tended to turn introspective."


I have done some research & unearthed a section of an old school report that might prove interesting.

Pupil........... A Hitler
Class 5 B

Subject

History. Made no attempt to study Napoleon's Moscow campaign.

Art. Painting, very good at the undercoat but a bit sloppy with the artexing.

Religion. I think, I detected a certain dislike of the Jewish faith.

Geography. The only country he could identify on a map of Europe was Poland.

PE. Football. A more than useful right winger.
Cricket. When bowling, he has no trouble keeping his arm straight but he suffers from the occasional no ball.

Writing. All a bit of a struggle.

Overall. I have never met a more whiny child and he should really do something about his appearance, has he really only got brown shirts?

Gunned down: the teenager who dared to walk across his neighbour's prized lawn.

Extracts from an article in today’s Guardian:

Julian Borger. Washington Wednesday March 22, 2006

The Guardian

The 911 call.

Charles Martin called the emergency services operator after attacking Larry Mugrage. This is a transcript:

Martin. I've been being harassed by him and his parents for five years. Today just blew it up. Kid's just been giving me a bunch of shit, making the other kids harass me and my place, tearing things up.
Operator. OK, so what'd you do?
Martin. I shot him with a goddamn 410 shotgun twice.
Operator. You shot him with a shotgun? Where is he?
Martin. He's laying in his yard.

Mr Martin gunned down Larry Mugrage, his neighbours' 15-year-old son. The teenager's crime: walking across Mr Martin's lawn on his way home. Mr Martin opened fire from his house and then, according to the police, walked up to the wounded boy and pulled the trigger again at close range, killing him.

Larry Mugrage, a popular hard-working and clever schoolboy, added his name to a high and persistent death toll. A child is killed by a gun every three hours in America. According to the latest statistics, nearly 1,000 children under 19 are shot dead every year. Another 800 use guns to commit suicide, and more than 160 die in firearm accidents.

Forty per cent of American households own guns, but those guns are 22 times more likely to be involved in an accidental shooting, or 11 times more likely to be used in a suicide, than in self-defence. On average, more than 80 Americans are killed by gunfire every day.

Mr Martin had every right to his .410 (11mm) bore shotgun. Ohio does not require anyone buying any firearm to have a permit. Nor does the state require gunowners to have a licence, although some inner city municipalities have stricter rules. Most state legislatures considering gun legislation are seeking to relax the remaining controls. Last year, Florida introduced a law giving its citizens the right to "stand their ground" and open fire, even in a public place, if they feel threatened, and the gun lobby is trying to pass a bill in the state that would allow workers to bring guns into their workplace with or without their employer's consent.

Guns in America.
32.6% of adults keep guns in or around their home, according to a 2002 survey. An estimated 40% own a gun
30,136 people were killed by firearms in the US in 2003; 730 of these were accidental
1.3m rifles were manufactured in the US in 2004; as well as an estimated 294,000 revolvers; 728,500 pistols; and 732,000 shotguns. Only 132,500 of these weapons were exported

Taking into account the above, I believe it’s the duty of all non Americans to get behind the NRA, because by my reckoning. If we could get the number of gun owners up to 100%, this would reduce the number of Americans in the world by about 70,000 each year.