You might think Alaskan teenagers would know what to do if a two-legged varmint makes camp, ballistically speaking. T’aint necessarily so. Enter Teens on Target, a firearms class that teaches youngsters in the Land of the Midnight Sun basic firearms safety and armed self-defense. Course founder Elaina Spraker told peninsulaclarion.com that the instruction was inspired by a conversation with her son . . .
“She asked him whether his girlfriend, who sometimes went on the shooting trips, enjoyed it as much as he did. Her son responded that the girls in the group usually hung back and often seemed intimidated by the guns.
“That’s when the wheels started turning,” she said . . .
In addition to safety, the course includes trigger technique, accuracy practice, shooting from a full range of positions, and a chance to gain experience with a variety of guns. Ted Spraker said that the class begins with shotgun trap-shooting, then progresses to rifles and handguns, and finishes with a course in the AR-50 assault rifle, which Ted Spraker said the girls are “not bashful about shooting.”
“Sometimes the only thing that saves us from running out of ammo is that it gets dark,” Elaina Spraker said.
Sounds like someone should donate some weapon-mounted-lights. Meanwhile, thanks to the NRA for helping fund the effort. And here’s hoping Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America have a s-fit over this, so that the course gets even more publicity, so that instructors in the lower-48 are inspired to recreate it.
“The true value of this program is female empowerment,” said Elaina Spraker. “You take an adolescent girl, and something very positive happens when they learn the power of firearms.”
[h/t Dean Weingarten]