A Maryland Republican group awarded a lifetime National Rifle Asscoiation membership to a boy who was suspended from school in March for chewing a Pop Tart into what his teacher thought was the shape of a gun.
The Anne Arundel County Republicans presented 8-year-old Josh Welch with the membership at a fundraiser on Thursday. Welch was suspended from Park Elementary School for two days because of the incident, and a lawyer has filed an appeal to remove the suspension from the boy’s record.
In an interview with Fox News, Welch has said he was trying to “turn it into a mountain but, it didn’t look like a mountain really and it turned out to be a gun [kind of].”
Republican state Sen. J.B. Jennings told the Baltimore Sun “This isn’t about gun control. I’m just shaking my head that all of a sudden he’s being used as poster boy in the gun debate.”