There, the youngest Scouts are called Beavers and made to wear corny brown vests and blue Gilligan-style bucket hats. The squirt gun fight ban sounds like something Scouts Canada, the Scouting organization that turned me off of Scouting as a boy, would dream up. must only be used to shoot at targets, and eye protection must be worn."īut what kind of watered down fun is that for a boy? Unless the targets are searing hot coals or a clown mouth on the state fair midway, spraying anything other than people is as diluted as Velcro the Tail on the Donkey. According to the group's 2015 National Shooting Sports Manual, "water guns. Of course, the Boy Scouts of America has been flexible on the "kind" front for decades when it came to gays, but now that that's changing, perhaps it'll welcome Super Soakers, too. Ironically, the same Scout Law that demands members be "kind" also requires them to be "clean," and squirt gun fights are the closest most boys come to taking showers in the summer. The ban has apparently been on the books for years, but it's under fire this unofficial start to summer after a Scouting Magazine writer recently reminded leaders that squirting people with water is forbidden.ĭousing someone with a water gun is off-limits because "pointing a firearm or simulated firearm at any individual is unauthorized" under the Guide to Safe Scouting and it's "unkind," making it a breach of one of the 12 attributes that define a Scout. Water gun play has no place in the paramilitary organization, where boys are taught to build fires, rappel down mountains, survive in the wild with nothing but a spork and make macaroni art. Now that the Boy Scouts of America appears poised to lift its ban on gay adult leaders, it ought to set its sights on another prohibition - squirt gun fights.