Training Child Survivalists in the US

[n2doc]

By Brian Blanco FEBRUARY 22, 2013


Old Town, Florida

By Brian Blanco

You feel a moment. I’m not certain if it’s a second lost or a second gained, but in that moment the Earth stops. It’s the moment you watch a child, a young girl in purple shoes, pull a loaded AK-47 assault rifle from the cab of a pick-up truck.




The child, 9-year-old Brianna, had no ill intentions with the weapon of course. She was simply retrieving the gun for a man she affectionately calls “Uncle Jim”. He is Jim Foster, a 57-year-old former police officer and the leader of the North Florida Survival Group. The organisation teaches children and adults alike to handle weapons, and Jim refers to it as a ‘militia”.

Jim was the man who, after feeling out my intentions in a two-hour meeting at a chain restaurant a few weeks earlier, had granted me permission to photograph his group’s field training exercise. It was an opportunity I snatched up without hesitation. It’s not every day that a photojournalist gets an invitation to shoot a militia gathering. Understandably, they tend to be fairly secretive groups who don’t exactly keep the media on their Christmas card lists.

When I first emailed Jim requesting access to his organisation for a story about second amendment issues, I fully expected to have my email dragged straight to the trash, never to hear from him again. Within hours he proved me wrong. He left a phone message thanking me for contacting him and agreeing to meet with me face to face, albeit sans cameras or tape recorders.




more
http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2013/02/22/an-amendment-revisited/


http://blogs.reuters.com/fullfocus/2013/02/22/training-child-survivalists/#a=1

[cali]

1. Very interesting.

I have come to the conclusion- and this article is just one more bit of reinforcement- that many people need something that distills amorphous fear that they feel, distilling it and projecting it on something outer and easily identified is a simple solution to complexity. In addition, these kinds of folks love the melodrama they create; they prefer it over the mundane, the quotidian.

If grown people want to play these dangerous, stupid games, fine. But dragging young children into it is inexcusable.

I have a couple of quibbles with the article; these aren't survivalists as the author claims, but full blown anti-government right wing militia members. The author does state that they belong to a militia but he refers to them as survivalists.

[rdharma]

2. Survival?

I think these teabillies are more endangered by their daily intake of bacon double cheeseburgers and fried chicken nuggets than imaginary jack booted thugs out to grab their shootin' irons!