While Our Politicians Quibble, The Gun Manufacturers Are Literally Aiming For Our Children

[kpete]

BEARING ARMS
Selling a New Generation on Guns

Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children.


New Hampshire Police Chiefs Hold a 31-Gun Raffle for a Training Program (January 27, 2013)

The industry’s strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for “junior shooters” and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of their makers.

The pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-supported magazine that seeks to get children involved in the recreational use of firearms, once featured a smiling 15-year-old girl clutching a semiautomatic rifle. At the end of an accompanying article that extolled target shooting with a Bushmaster AR-15 — an advertisement elsewhere in the magazine directed readers to a coupon for buying one — the author encouraged youngsters to share the article with a parent.

“Who knows?” it said. “Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!”

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http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/27/us/selling-a-new-generation-on-guns.html?_r=0

[hack89]

1. There are many here that got their first rifles as a child

when I was growing up 12 seemed to be the age when boys got a .22 rifle at Christmas. That is when my daughter and son got theirs.

There is nothing new about this.

[nick of time]

2. As long as they're properly supervised

what's the problem? My kids all participated in shooting sports as they grew up and none of them turned into killers or criminals.

[SQUEE]

3. Education and familiarity with firearms is important.

I grew up with many firearms in my home, it was important and cherished time I spent with my grandfather, father and uncles. All us cousins, including the girls spent hours hunting, target shooting and cleaning. Entire weekends talking, laughing and bonding as a family. This is the culture I grew up in, and many others as well.
This is a large nation and we are a varied and complex people.

[nadinbrzezinski]

4. Same tactic as Joe the Camel I guess.

Expect gunnies to miss by a mile why they are doing it.

[Paladin]

5. Gun Education Programs In Schools Are Industry Propaganda Efforts.

This article quotes studies from the National Shooting Sports group which substantiate this long-suspected fact. Something to remember, when the demand for gun handling classes in schools is suggested here at DU, for the umpteenth time. And definitely something to remember, if shooting instruction is offered in your community's schools---it ain't Eddie Eagle talking, it's Wayne LaPierre.....

[Junkdrawer]

6. A frightened woman enters the gun culture, and, following what seems to her sensible advice....

encourages her troubled son to take up target shooting as a therapeutic measure.

Result: Sandy Hook