Monday, March 29, 2010

13th Line of Defense?

I heard a rumor a long time ago that the Boy Scouts of America served as the 13th line of defense. I tried to research this, but I couldn't find anything anywhere online that confirmed this.

I then went to the website of the Department of Defense to see if they had anything on the Boy Scouts and THIS is what I found. Section 4.4 says: "Scouting organizations are not considered part of the military [...]." This doesn't totally disprove the rumor--after all, normal civilians probably are the 14th line of defense or something.

If anyone could shed some light on the subject, I will be very happy. I would really like to be able to confirm or deny this rumor.

1 comment:

Bryan Anderson said...

I heard a similar rumor a long time ago when I was a Boy Scout, and it came to mind today for some reason. As I heard it, the Scouts are the nation's third line of defense behind the military and the US Post Office workers. As far as I can tell there is no truth to this whatsoever. It seems to be just a rumor that successfully stoked the egos of a few people involved with Scouting, and thus spread. Besides, the BSA is a private organization, not an arm of the government.

With that said, I grew up in Scouts, and we could probably shoot a rifle better than your average postal worker.