Eagle Scout denied graduation for gun left in car

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I'm primarily talking about the busybody that blew the whistle after eavesdropping on a private conversation.
The kid was attempting to do what is at least legally the right thing by arranging to have the gun removed from the campus.
I also charge that he was not using common sense by not just leaving the shotgun behind the seat of his truck for the rest of the day and keeping quiet about it.
You could say that this is what triggered this whole avalanche.

That was a link in the chain that I had not considered. Indeed, the busybody could have kept quiet. But once the busybody intervened, I suspect that the rest flowed pretty much automatically.

One of the downsides of a popular distrust of government is that government officials are consequently deprived of the capacity to exercise discretion, judgement and common sense in the execution of their duties.

And it could be that distrust of government is because government officials don't use discretion when they should often enough.

Isn't that a bit of a chicken and egg question, though?

The public doesn't trust government, therefore Congress limits government's discretion, therefore the public doesn't trust government.

Officials can't break that cycle--we aren't allowed to act outside the limits of the laws that give us our authorities. So the cycle has to be broken either at the legislative level, or with the electorate.