Americans concerned about the future of the Second Amendment likely have little idea about the insidious efforts progressives will undertake to turn the nation away from supporting an individual right to bear arms. Forget for a moment the current bills being debated in Washington, D.C. and state legislatures across the nation. Those are focused on the here and now. Progressives are much more patient than that: they are teaching younger generations of Americans to embrace an irrational fear of firearms – which is why a seemingly comical incident that occurred at Park Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland is anything but.

It was there that second-grader Josh Welch received a two-day suspension for chewing a breakfast pastry into what his teacher thought was the shape of a gun. “It was already a rectangle. I just kept on biting it and biting it and tore off the top of it and kind of looked like a gun,” said Josh. “But it wasn’t.” “All I was trying to do was turn it into a mountain but, it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun kinda,” he added.

Josh’s teacher was apparently upset when she saw the creation. “She was pretty mad and I think I was in big trouble,” Josh said.

The school phoned Josh’s father, telling him his son had been suspended for two days, for shaping a piece of pastry into a gun. According to the Josh’s father, school officials say Josh also committed another apparently egregious violation of the school’s “zero tolerance” policy: he said, “bang, bang” while holding the breakfast pastry. Josh contends he never uttered those words, but he did admit to pointing the newly-fashioned pastry at the ceiling.

“They said they had to suspend Josh for two days, because he used his breakfast pastry and fashioned it as a gun,” Josh’s father told FOX affiliate WBFF. He further characterized the events leading up to the suspension as “insanity.”

Unfortunately, the insanity was just beginning. Assistant Principal Myrna Phillips sent a letter home to other parents. “I am writing to let you know about an incident that occurred this morning in one of our classrooms and encourage you to discuss this matter with your child in a manner you deem most appropriate,” it began. “During breakfast this morning, one of our students used food to make inappropriate gestures that disrupted the class. While no physical threats were made and no one was harmed, the student had to be removed from the classroom.”

Why Josh had to suspended is then revealed. “As is the case with all classroom disruptions, standard procedures outlined by Anne Arundel County Public Schools (AACPS) were followed to address the student’s actions and communicate with the family. As you are aware, the AACPS Code of Student Conduct and appropriate consequences related to violations of the code are clearly spelled out in the Student Handbook, which was sent home during the first week of school and can be found on our website,www.aacps.org. As you are also aware, parents and their children must sign a form indicating they have read and understand the Student Handbook.”

The Student Handbook, itself a remarkable bureaucratic effort, seemingly designed to codify virtually every aspect of human behavior, has a section entitled “Consequences for Elementary Students” in which questionable behavior is divided into six levels of consequences. Under the category “Weapons (including look-a-like guns),” it is revealed that Josh’s infraction amounted to a Category 5 consequence. A Category 5 consequence requires an office referral, the notification of a parent or guardian, and an extended suspension of ten or more days. It also notes that, “In addition to any of the above consequences, restitution for loss or damage will be required.”

In other words, as far as school officials are concerned, our elementary school “gunslinger” got off easy.

Were the story to end here it would be bad enough. But it doesn’t. In the same letter sent home to parents, Assistant Principal Myrna Phillips inadvertently reveals what public schools are really attempting to do to our children. “If your children express that they are troubled by today’s incident, please talk with them and help them share their feelings. Our school counselor is available to meet with any students who have the need to do so next week. In general, please remind them of the importance of making good choices.”

This is the true face of progressive thinking. Every kid is a flower so delicate that a second grader “armed” with a Pop Tart, one his teacher decided was shaped like a gun, has precipitated an incident so “traumatic” other kids may require counseling as a result.

Writer Mark Steyn explained it best. “You’re doomed, America,” Steyn said. “You’re done for. No society can survive this level of stupidity…"Do you think if you raised people so that you make a school counselor to available to them in cased they’ve been traumatized by someone who was nibbled a Pop Tart into the shape of a gun – do you think if they’re ever called upon to get out those ships and the storm the beaches of Normandy, do you think they’re going to be up to that? ‘Oh no look, the Germans, they’re all holding Pop Tarts! AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!’ No society can survive this level of stupidity. These small things are not small. They tell you a lot about the institutionalized stupidity of our institutions.”

Unfortunately, they do more than that. These things tell you far more about the ambitions, not the stupidity, of the progressive movement. There isn’t a normal child on the entire planet who would be remotely upset by this incident – unless that child was taught to be upset. Nor would children have an inordinate fear of guns, real or otherwise, unless that was instilled in them as well.

Americans need to ask themselves, who benefits from raising a generation of easily traumatized children with an inordinate fear of firearms? Certainly not those of us who believe it takes strong, independent-minded people to make a healthy society. Any person groomed to be traumatized by gun-shaped Pop Tarts, or firearms per se, is another person being groomed for a lifetime of helplessness, subservience and dependency.

Progressive know that their chances of eviscerating the Second Amendment right now are small. But tomorrow’s another day. Tomorrow is when a generation of Josh Welches, well-versed in the dogma of all-encompassing, Nanny State progressivism, assume the levers of power.

Ronald Reagan once said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Uber Communist Vladimir Lenin once said, “Give me a child for the first five years of his life and he will be mine forever.” President Barack Obama is promoting a “Preschool for All” plan aimed at putting four-year olds in government-run “educational” settings. Public schools are indoctrinating our children to fear guns both real and imaginary, under the banner of “zero tolerance.”

Zero tolerance for individual rights and freedom, as well as anything else that does not accrue to the progressive worldview, is more like it.