I'm not someone who thinks the United States is perfect. I believe it to be the greatest nation on Earth, but it's not perfect. There are always things we could do better, but I'm constantly annoyed at how the left seems to think every answer has been solved by Europe.
Of course, maybe that's why Europe keeps needing our help for anything relating to a show of force. However, there's one area where a European nation really is doing it better than us, and it's about defending their nation.
Poland has concerns following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They have to believe they're on the hit list somewhere and so they're getting ready to fight. How? By making marksmanship a mandatory school subject.
Polish schoolchildren will soon be receiving one hour of mandatory firearm training each week that includes safe handling, field stripping and marksmanship using laser-based systems. The course also teaches survival skills, first aid and cybersecurity. No live ammunition is used in the classes, which will be held in school gymnasiums.
The “Education for Safety” program was announced late last year in response to heightened concerns Russia will invade Poland, which is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The communist military is currently mired in the war it launched against Ukraine in 2022, although the sheer volume of troops and hardware it has amassed in the area continue to increase tension and probability of an incursion—whether deliberate or inadvertent.
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Concerns that a NATO-member nation will be attacked are underscored by Russian President Vladmir Putin’s insistence that any country providing supplies to Ukraine’s military is directly intervening in the war. Ukraine’s efforts to join NATO stalled after the invasion, although Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made it clear his country wants to enter the organization, which was formed in 1949, just as the Cold War heated.
There's an apocryphal quote attributed to Japanese Admiral Yamamoto where he is alleged to have said that you could not invade the United States because "there would be a rifle behind every blade of grass." While he may not have actually said it, a similar attitude should be fostered in our nations' enemies and it should be based on fact.
Every man, woman, and child should know how to use a firearm. They should have the basics of firearm safety and marksmanship engrained in them from an early age and it should be encouraged well after the school years are over.
Poland's decision means they will have legions of people who know how to use a rifle should they need to repel a Russian invasion...or an invasion from anyone else.
I'd ask why we're not doing this, but the truth is that we all know why. Our schools are run by people who wet themselves at the mere hint that maybe we should do something beyond indoctrinating our kids to believe there are 4,385 genders and all of them are valid, that their parents are awful for thinking they should mutilate themselves until they're legal adults, and that every white kid is really racist.
But Poland is heading in a direction we really should have been leading the way on.
