Article: Red Riding Hood vs The Assault Weapon

No doubt you've seen this poster. With kids everywhere going back to school this week and last it's a topic on the minds of many parents (including me) and, frankly, this does a great job of pushing all my buttons.

It's designed to be provocative, hoping to get people to more seriously consider supporting gun control laws against assault weapons but the question is, will it help?

I've seen this surface periodically after one of the most recent tragic school shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut ("most recent tragic school shootings" is an awful phrase to have to write).

This, however, is the first article I've seen discussing whether or not the banning of Little Red Riding Hood is a fair comparison to banning assault weapons and both subjects go under the microscope.

From PolitiFact:

The Little Red Riding Hood shown in the image has indeed been banned before. The version of the 17th century fairy tale was adapted by the late, Caldecott Medal-winning illustrator Trina Schart Hyman and was originally published in 1987. According to media accounts, the volume became a target because one image showed a bottle of wine in the girl’s basket, a detail that had been included in the original version of the fairy tale. 

An Associated Press article quoted Culver City, Calif., assistant superintendent for instruction Vera Jashni saying that the inclusion of wine in the book "gives the younger ones the wrong impression about alcohol. If they should refrain, why give them a story saying it's okay?'' Jashni told the AP that she was worried about lines in the book that said, "The grandmother drank some of the wine, and ... after a while, the grandmother felt quite strong and healthy, and began to clean up the mess that the wolf had left in the cottage.''

The article goes on to further explain the objections to Red Riding Hood's basket contents, summarize a little more of her history in schools and then scrutinizes assault weapon bans as well.

The conclusions are surprising in that this (ad) is actually a shaky use of a comparison regarding "ban for ban" in the whole of the USA.

But the point has been made and the Sandy Hook Elementary parents have been heard. After a sullied reputation there for a few years it's nice to see Little Red working to keep our kids safe again, even if it's not the way she was originally intended to.

(I realize there's probably a lot more I could consider and analyze here regarding Red Riding Hood appearing in conjunction with these issues right now but this is too close to home for me so I'll leave you to do that yourself.)