NRA lifetime membership usually costs around $550, but all 8-year-old Joshua Welch had to do was get suspended from school for wielding a cherry Pop-Tart.
Two months after Welch was suspended from Park Elementary School in Maryland for nibbling a Pop-Tart into the shape of a gun, The National Rifle Association has granted the 7-year old boy a free lifetime membership.
The boy, then seven, was sent to the principal’s office where he was suspended from school for two days.
News of the boy’s suspension spread quickly.
“You’re doomed, America,” National Review’s Mark Steyn said on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show. “You’re done for.”
“No society can survive this level of stupidity,” Steyn said then. “The school counselor is available to meet with any students who are traumatized by hearing reports of some guy four grades below them who nibbles a Pop-Tart into a gun-like shape.”
Although the boy originally denied attempting to make his snack look like a weapon, he later admitted to CBS that the Pop-Tart did indeed look like a gun.
The elementary school student was granted the lifetime membership Wednesday night at an Anne Arundel County Republican Party political fundraiser.
After receiving the certificate, Welch reportedly returned to playing video games on his cell phone.