Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Boy Scouts

When the nation's military and reserves are off fighting two wars and the police are too burdened by crime to deal with border security, who then becomes the front line of America's war on illegal immigration, drug smuggling, human trafficking, terrorism, and other such unsightly problems stemming from US/Mexico border policy? The Boy Scouts. Naturally.

Ten minutes into arrant mayhem in this town near the Mexican border, and the gunman, a disgruntled Iraq war veteran, has already taken out two people, one slumped in his desk, the other covered in blood on the floor.

The responding officers — eight teenage boys and girls, the youngest 14 — face tripwire, a thin cloud of poisonous gas and loud shots — BAM! BAM! — fired from behind a flimsy wall. They move quickly, pellet guns drawn and masks affixed.

“United States Border Patrol! Put your hands up!” screams one in a voice cracking with adolescent determination as the suspect is subdued.

It is all quite a step up from the square knot.

The Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America that began 60 years ago, is training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence — an intense ratcheting up of one of the group’s longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters.

.........Yeah. When did the Boy Scouts stop being about camping and pinewood derby races and made a move towards supplanting Blackwater as our nation's largest private army? Not that I'm against BSA doing a little career training and some of that being for law enforcement, but this seems less like that and more like highly decentralized organization allowing for mildly crazy survivalist militaristic types running kids through Army Ranger training far beyond the scope, depth, or breadth of anything the kids will ever become involved in. It seems not so much "this is what police officers do" and more "you are the spear point at the tip of a war"/"this is a legal substitute for SWAT training."

But yeah, I'm sure there will be no problems with a bunch of dads and a discharged Marine drill seargent from the local police force who's on probabtion for "anger issues" training a bunch a kids on use of assault weapons and hostage crisis scenarios. What could possibly go wrong?