A Cub Scout was thrown out of his pack after he asked a state legislator why she supported gun legislation that allowed a wife-beater to own a gun. The brave little boy then asked why owning a gun was a right but having health coverage was a privilege.
Shame on his pack leader!
Exercising free speech is a right too!
No wonder membership in the Boy Scouts is declining and they opened membership to girls. Let’s hope they are as outspoken as Ames Mayfield.
The New York Times reports:
“When a group of Cub Scouts met with a Colorado state senator this month, they asked her about some of the most controversial topics in the nation: gun control, the environment, race and the proposed border wall between the United States and Mexico.
“But questions from one Cub Scout, Ames Mayfield, 11, got him kicked out of his den in Broomfield, Colo., according to his mother, Lori Mayfield. At the meeting on Oct. 9, for which the scouts were told to prepare questions for State Senator Vicki Marble, Ms. Mayfield recorded her son asking the senator why she would not support “common-sense gun laws.”
“I was shocked that you co-sponsored a bill to allow domestic violence offenders to continue to own a gun,” Ames said in a question that took more than two minutes. He continued, “Why on earth would you want somebody who beats their wife to have access to a gun?”
“The event took place not long after the Las Vegas shooting. As part of her answer, Ms. Marble, a Republican from Fort Collins, defended her position on gun ownership, saying that shootings in Las Vegas and Aurora, Colo., happened in so-called gun-free zones, and that “the more guns a society has, the less crime or murders are committed.”
“On Oct. 14, five days after the event with Ms. Marble, Ms. Mayfield was asked to meet the leader of the Cub Scout pack who oversees a number of dens in Broomfield, including the one Ames belonged to.
“Ms. Mayfield and the pack leader, whom she did not identify, sat down at a Chipotle restaurant that afternoon. “He let me know in so many words that the den leader was upset about the topic of gun control,” Ms. Mayfield said in an interview on Saturday. “It was too politically charged.”
“He communicated that my son was no longer welcome back to the den,” she said.
“Ms. Mayfield said the den leader’s response might have been fueled by her decision to post the videos of the senator’s interaction with the scouts online, where they were picked up by the local news media.
“She also said she was told the den leader had been upset by other references in Ames’s long question, such as pointing out that the senator was a Republican and that gun ownership was considered a right while health care was seen as a privilege.”
Ames has a bright future ahead of him.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
As a former Scoutmaster, I must say that the Den leader should have been kicked out of Scouting. As well as the local Pack Leader and committee for allowing Ames to be banished.
Ames was following Scout Law .
A Scout is:
Trustworthy,
Loyal,
Helpful,
Friendly,
Courteous,
Kind,
Obedient,
Cheerful,
Thrifty,
Brave,
Clean,
and Reverent.
Ames was also living up to the Scout Oath
On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake and morally straight.
We can make a case for each item on behalf of Ames.
That pack leader should wear a badge of shame.
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I agree the wrong people were removed from scouting.
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I agree completely.
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Ditto.
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Totlly agree, & add that this outrageous incident should not be taken as a ding on national Scoutinng. Take it as a local anomaly which does not represent the natl org. Scouting is a creature of the local public school: its Cub & BS packs are the creature of the pubsch community; their plans & activities are hatched & staffed by pubsch parents.
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Since when is Las Vegas a “gun free zone”?
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I think technically he was kicked out of his “den.”
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Yes…but in order to be a part of another den his parents would probably have to drive further to make it happen. Instead, the den leader should be removed.
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I was a Campfire Girl and a Girl Scout about 70 years ago. I am not familiar with Boy Scout terminology. I.e. den vs Pack.
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It is important to keep one’s animals straight and not mix up packs and dens.
Bears have cubs in dens. Hence Cub Scouts belong to dens.
Wolves have pups, which belong to packs, so Pup Scouts would belong to packs if there were such a thing as Pup Scouts (which there are not, by the way)
Of course, packs are not technically the actual place where the wolves “have” their pups (that would probably also be called a den) but now we are needlessly getting into complexities that tend to just confuse the issue.
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Don’t know if you linked to this story: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/oct/22/cub-scout-kicked-out-of-group-colorado-republican-vicki-marble or the NYT story.
Incredibly sad and one of the many reasons I’m ambivalent about my son being in the Boy Scouts. But he likes it.
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I loved Boy Scout swag as a kid. And pine derby racing.
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I also loved the Pinewood Derby, but my car always came in dead last.
Some of the cars looked and raced like they had been made by professionals and I always had a sneaky suspicion that the kids’ fathers had done most of the work.
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The fathers were definitely doing most of the work. Now that I think about it, I think I was outraged by the Pinewood Derby.
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So I guess I can finally stop referring to you as s/he? I do believe this is the first time you’ve “come out” as male. 😉
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For clarity, I was addressing SDP. I believe FLERP! has already identified himself as a father.
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Plus the machismo just explodes off my comments.
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There have been girls in Cub scouts for a long time.
It was just never official.
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I also suspected that the winners were weighting their balsa wood cars with lead fishing sinkers.
Though no one ever checked.
Cuz, you know, Cub scouts are supposed to be trustworthy
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I thought using ballast was legal, subject to a weigh-in for each car. I taped a bunch of quarters to mine, but alas it was not enough.
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My own pinewood derby car was no match either in appearance or technology for those whose fathers worked with them. My own father, a dairy farmer, had little time for such things. He would have assiduously avoided involvement anyway, as he was an idealist.
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Now I learn after all these years that weighting cars is actually legal.
Damn. To think that I at least could have come in second to last.
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I was in the Scouts as a boy. I don’t think this would have happened in either my Cub Scout Den or my Boy Scout troop.
Ames Mayfield? You rule, dude! So does your mom.
Thanks for showing the rest of us–including your interlocutor in the discussion that resulted in your grossly unfair dismissal from Scouts–what civic courage and engagement look like.
Keep up the good work!
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I have worked with many cub scouts…this does not sound like an 11 yr old who has not been couched. I cannot see the child being removed from the den and pack because of this incident , unless something else has happened.
Perhaps it was the you tube video and the actions/comments from mom that did it. She got it in the paper, after all. This topic is to divisive for the troop…do you want other parents forming sides? The parents probably have already because of the article.
I wonder what the other side of the story says and what the troop committee decided (governing body of parents) because the den leader and scoutmaster should not have acted independently.
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If you don’t want kids speaking up and asking difficult political questions of a politician at a political event, then don’t take kids to see politicians at political events.
As for the parents “forming sides”, I would hope that parents, being adults and all, are capable of understanding that under the First Amendment, everyone is entitled to free speech, especially when it comes to confronting government officials, even if they don’t particularly like the speech.
If these scouts had visited a politician who was pro-abortion rights, and one of the scouts had challenged him/her on that position, would you be saying the same thing? Or are you just upset because you disagree with the question posed by this scout?
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“this does not sound like an 11 yr old who has not been couched. I cannot see the child being removed from the den and pack because of this incident , unless something else has happened.”
What a crock. Perhaps you have never parented a ‘different’ child. My husb & I often ponder on our eldest, who seemed to have been born w/his own sense of right & wrong that was far more rigid than our own [he was a vegetarian by age 7– shepherded wayward house spiders & bugs outside via paper cup…].
We were both avid Scouts in our day. After a yr of Kindergarten ‘Tiger Cubs’, we asked our eldest grinningly if he would continue to Cub Scouts– his response [word for word at age 6]: “So… is Cub Scouts the same thing?… Everyone wears the same clothes and does the same activities?”…
Frankly, we’d never thought of Scouting that way, but had to say Yes; he demurred. [#2 & #3 sons were fine w/it & continued on to collect badges etc.]. Had eldest continued, he would have been that kid that asked the pointed Q’s of the elected rep– w/o any input from us– he was already by the late ’90’s an internet researcher, & an activist, by age 11.
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I’m not sure what this boy’s sitting on a couch has to do with this. I assume that’s what you mean when you use the verb “couched”–or did you man “coached?”
And to answer your question, yes, in fact, I do want responsible, thoughtful and well-informed citizens (hard to do in our current trashy media environment, I know) taking sides on issues. That’s kind of a salient feature of a democracy. You know, a diversity of intellectual and moral stances in voices engaged in meaningful, reasoned discourse.
And as Dienne says below, if you don’t want people, and yes, even kids, asking hard questions of politicians, don’t bring them to political events. That’s not such a hard thing to understand, is it?
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Bravo to the boy who asked tougher questions than too many “journalists.” He asked the question of the century: “The brave little boy then asked why owning a gun was a right but having health coverage was a privilege.” YES! The GOP sack of lies and obfuscation politician had the unmitigated nerve to claim that gun crimes happened in so-called gun-free zones, and that “the more guns a society has, the less crime or murders are committed.” Total lies and garbage. So many of these massacres occurred in gun zones, where guns are carried by the citizenry: Las Vegas, Arizona, Colorado, etc. The GOP should rot in hell and then be flushed down the toilet of history for its support of NRA talking points like those voiced by this GOP hack.
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So who are the snowflakes?
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Diane,
As someone with 42 years in Scouting (Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts) with an Eagle Scout, Life Scout and Girl Scout; I find this worse than awful. It goes against everything that Scouts are taught. Grrrrrrr…………
Kas Winters
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The mother is to blame here. The Cub Scout was the victim of his mother’s eagerness to make an adult political point using a child questioning a politician. The questioning was a learning experience for the scouts! Not a political grandstanding opportunity for parents.
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How do we know the mother put him up to it? Besides, the reaction of the den leader is what should be called into question first. The boy could be advanced in his maturity and really wanted an answer to the question himself.
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Um, hello? It was the scouts that decided to take the kids to meet an elected official – otherwise known as a politician. What was the kid supposed to do? Just sit there obediently and be indoctrinated? Don’t blame the boy or his family for making an inherently political event political.
Incidentally, can you answer the boy’s question? Why exactly are guns, which kill people, a right, while healthcare, which saves lives, is a “privilege”?
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Guns are not a right. The right is to keep and bear arms. And guns do not kill people. A gun is a tool, and it does not have a mind of its own.
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“Guns are not a right”? What is the distinction you are trying to make? It’s pretty firmly established that the Second Amendment gives people the right to buy “guns.”
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Some friends just returned from a week in Ireland. They said they felt safe knowing that no one had a gun. It is not an issue.
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Charles: a gun and its bullets are designed to kill and maim. A toaster, for example, is not designed to kill or maim but it is possible to kill a person with a toaster. I guess there are some examples some where in which a toaster was actually used as a murder weapon. However, there is no constitutional right to own a toaster. I think that universal health care or single payer would be covered under article one section 8 of the constitution.
From crooks and liars web site: Quote – A mother went to a vending machine, she dropped her purse and the gun inside her bag went off. The bullet ricocheted off of the vending machine and grazed her child on the face.
“Charges are not pending, it’s an accidental discharge,” said Officer Colendula Green with the Jackson Police Department. That two-year-old is okay.
While Mississippi has an open-carry policy, weapons are prohibited on Merit Health campuses. end quote
http://crooksandliars.com/2016/04/mom-accidently-shoots-2-yr-old-face
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If you really want me to think you’re that obtuse, fine, I can do that. So why is owning a gun a right then? What other purpose does a gun serve other than to kill (whether animals or people)? Why is the ability to kill a right while the ability to get healthcare in order to live is a privilege?
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Q So why is owning a gun a right then? What other purpose does a gun serve other than to kill (whether animals or people)? Why is the ability to kill a right while the ability to get healthcare in order to live is a privilege? END Q
The right to own deadly weapons (including guns) goes back many centuries. People have the right to self-defense. And if you have a reasonable fear that another person is intending to do you harm, then you have the right to defend yourself. And this right includes the right to use deadly weapons, and lethal force.
Guns serve many purposes. Some individuals collect antique weapons, like smoothbore muskets. Some people do re-enactments of civil war battles, and use guns (WITH BLANKS) to do the re-enactments. Some people enjoy shooting at paper targets in competitions. Some people use shotguns, and shoot at flying clay targets, for sport. Guns/rifles are used for many other purposes, than just killing. Fact is, less than 1/2 of 1 percent of all firearms, are ever used illegally.
Some people consider access to health care a “right”. It may be.
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And some people have AR 15 assault weapons to kill lots of innocent people, like Sandy Hook and Las Vegas. Mass murder is ok with you and the NRA
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Diane,
Your statement – And some people have AR 15 assault weapons to kill lots of innocent people, like Sandy Hook and Las Vegas. Mass murder is ok with you and the NRA.
Mass murder isn’t acceptable – period. And for you to jump to that conclusion because one owns a gun – or an AR15 – what ever, is beyond belief. Nowhere in any material from the NRA even mentions this nor does any of their instructive materials on safety and handling of firearms.
It might be informative for you to go to one of the instructors on safety and see what they are actually about – experience is more informative than second hand hearsay. You might still go away with the same belief, or you may see NRA slightly different – I doubt it – it wouldn’t fit your narrative. But try it.
If one owns a van, a pressure cooker, do you also call those individuals potentially mass murders. Now that the airlines are checking cell phones and laptops coming onto planes – do you call those people mass murders – bringing down a planer full of people?
To make a point said here before – it is not the device/weapon – it is the individual.
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Q And some people have AR 15 assault weapons to kill lots of innocent people, like Sandy Hook and Las Vegas. Mass murder is ok with you and the NRA END Q
Be fair. I see no legitimate sporting or self-defense use for individual citizens to possess military-style assault weapons. There is a legitimate public interest in restricting access to these types of weapons. Private citizens should not be permitted to own fully-automatic weapons, nor obtain the kits and parts to convert weapons to fully-automatic.
I do not condone mass murder. That is obscene.
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@jscheidell: Double Thumbs Up! I support the bill of rights, including the 2d amendment. That does not mean that I support mass murder.
Our free society has to balance the legitimate rights of people to own deadly weapons, and the legitimate public interest in keeping deadly weapons away from individuals who should not possess them.
No one ever said that this was going to be easy.
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Every time any one is killed by an assault weapon, the NRA should feel shame.
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Every time there is a mass shooting, several things happen:
-Gun sales increase
-NRA Membership increases
-Donations to the NRA, to support gun rights, increase.
-Ammunition sales increase.
The NRA is NOT responsible for mass shootings, nor should the NRA feel “shame”. see this
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/nra-donations-las-vegas-shooting_us_59dbfafce4b0208970cf2d32
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LGBTQ people are frequently the victims of violent crimes, like gay-bashing. Remembver Matthew Shepard, and the Pulse nightclub shooting. Many (not all) LGBTQ people, are now arming themselves, because they have had enough of being victimized. see
http://www.pinkpistols.org/
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I think you’re reading too much into this. His leader was already unhappy with the topics he hit upon.
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Wait, what?
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The mother? Couldn’t have been the father? Or perhaps just the, yes, liberal, questioning-authority ambience he was raised in?
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How is the question this boy asked not part of the learning experience?
If there is anyone to blame here, it is the hypocritical, censorious politician who lacks the political will and courage to answer the hard questions her constituents ask her.
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The mother is not the problem. The scout leader needs a civics lesson. What learning experience did these scouts get – ask a tough question and you get kicked out? According the above article the senator was confronted by other difficult questions
One small example of why our school systems needs to install civics as a course and include the Constitution and Bill of Rights at appropriate age levels –
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America’s Heroes also Work in Fire Departments, Hospitals and Public Schools http://thiscantbehappening.net/print/3684
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Gives me hope for the future! Like I always tell my husband “welcome to the death throes of white male supremacy!”
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Whether the mother coached the son or used the son to make a political point is not the story here. The story is that a child said something controversial and was removed from his den for it. What sort of a lesson does this teach a child. The tree of liberty is watered with the attempt to keep from hurting a politician’s feelings? Boo to the troop leader.
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Shame on the elected official who took offense at a child’s questions. She probably complained to the den leader about the child’s insolence, daring to ask her a question.
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Diane,
I didn’t read nor could one infer from the info above that the senator took offense – only the leader had a problem. Your assumption that the senator talked to the leader I think may be unfair as to say that was the influential pressure to dump the little guy.
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Just a guess. I can’t see the den leader ejecting Ames without pressure from someone to do so.
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