Scare report doesn’t want you to pass on firearm traditions
The latest nonsense anti-2nd Amendment propaganda to hit the scene aims to convince Americans that firearm manufacturers are marketing their products directly to children.
The anti-2nd Amendment Violence Policy Center just released a report titled “Start Them Young,” which features as its cover a photograph of unhinged Sandy Hook murderer Adam Lanza as a child and surrounded by firearm paraphernalia.
An “About the Cover” section in the report is pulled from a 2013 report in The Telegraph: “A chilling photograph of a small boy, gnawing on a pistol clutched in his tiny hands, dressed in camouflage and with a grenade and ammunition belt in his lap, was recovered from the weapon-filled home of Sandy Hook school gunman Adam Lanza….A family friend said that Lanza and his older brother were taught to shoot almost as soon as they could hold a weapon by their mother Nancy, a gun fanatic. But a spokesman for Mrs. Lanza’s ex-husband, Peter, last night denied that the child in the uncaptioned photograph was either son.”
The report goes on to list several quotes from the firearms industry and various outdoors groups about the joys of getting young Americans involved in the shooting sports and the importance of raising a new generation of responsible gun owners.
Here’s one such statement from the Shooting Sports Retailer’s publication in 2007: “If we don’t improve at cultivating new hunters and shooters, the sport we love and industry we work in will eventually die away. That’s a strong diagnosis, but a realistic one. Like many enthusiast sports in this busy, competitive world, people are leaving faster than new ones are coming in — and this is a recipe for industry-wide trouble down the road.”
Over the course of its 46 page report, the Violence Policy Center goes on to surmise that gun manufacturers, sporting groups and parents interested in getting American youngsters involved in hunting and shooting sports are raising a generation of future mass shooters.
At one point, the organization relays the tragic story of two-year-old killed in Kentucky in 2013 when her 5-year-old brother got ahold of an unattended and loaded .22 caliber rifle. Because the rifle was a youth model, the report seeks to use the tragedy as proof that gun manufacturers are marketing to children and parents are handing deadly weapons to youngsters all over the country.
“The gun, a Crickett rifle manufactured by Keystone Sporting Arms, the self-proclaimed ‘leading rifle supplier in the youth market,’ is specially designed for children,” the report said.
Obviously, the report’s intended audience is not an intelligent one.
I told you about the tragic event in Kentucky the month after it happened. Headlines about what had happened caught my eye after Keystone Sporting Arms came under fire by liberals attempting the exact same smear campaign the Violence Policy Center is attempting against the entire firearm industry today.
You see, I was given one of their rifles as a child—though back then they were manufactured under a different name.
Here’s what I wrote in 2013:
This author is a literal lifelong gun owner and, incidentally, I was given a .22 caliber Chipmunk rifle — a product similar to the .22 Crickett rifle central to tragic Kentucky happenings — by my grandfather in the days after my birth. Chipmunk Rifles has since been bought by Bill (father) and Steve (son) McNeal, the founders of Keystone Sporting Arms, and the guns are sold alongside a growing line of small-stature .22s.I remember long, fun-filled afternoons shooting that rifle with my dad and younger brother (who was later also the proud owner of a Chipmunk) from a young age, always adhering to strict safety rules. My brother and I learned to respect the rifle for what it is, a deadly machine capable of taking life but also a tool that could be used to protect life, sustain life if need be or add a little joy to life on a Saturday afternoon shooting old cans and bottles for sport or hunting squirrels.We learned the process of properly loading, handling, firing and checking the rifle, which sports a manually cocking single-shot bolt action. And when Dad felt comfortable that my brother and I had reached the age where we understood what an extreme responsibility that firearm was (around the age of 8 or so), he would leave us to practice all afternoon on the small range fashioned near the house. It was not unusual for my brother and me to plink through a 500 round box of .22 cartridges on a nice weekend afternoon, one carefully aimed shot after the next.There was never an accident, never a bolt closed when someone was down range or when we headed back to the house to clean the rifles. And even with those bolts open, the Chipmunks were never pointed in the direction of anything that wasn’t intended to be shot.I carry that same respect today for every firearm that I come into contact with.
What happened in Kentucky was a tragedy and should have never occurred. But it had nothing to do with the firearm industry. The gun should have been unloaded and locked away.
But reports like this ridiculous tripe out from the Violence Policy Center do deserve some attention from gun owners. As I noted in the excerpt above, I will always be grateful that I was introduced to shooting at a young age. So if you have children, grandchildren or other youngsters around, here are a few things I propose in response to the alarmist report:
- Introduce them to NRA’s Eddie Eagle
- Check out some of the awesome youth shooting programs available
- Head to the range and teach some safe shooting yourself
And, heck, if there’s a birthday or another gifting opportunity coming up, I still can’t recommend Keystone’s rifles (pictured above) enough.
The bottom line is this: As a responsible 2nd Amendment supporter, it’s your responsibility to teach coming generations the importance and the great responsibility of gun ownership.
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