In the past, some gun producers, like Thompson/Center, have been staggeringly candid about their bid to appeal to younger consumers. For instance, in a review of Thompson/Center’s child-friendly gun “Hotshot,” the company’s director of marketing quoted back in 2014: “We’re targeting the six- to 12-year-old range and feel that with the inclusion of the one-inch spacer in the box, there will be a longer period that the child can use the rifle, potentially out to 15 years old.”
Meanwhile, youth-centered trade publications, like NRA Family or Junior Shooters, heavily feature guns tailored for kids and adolescents, often framing them as family-oriented purchases that preserve American values, like freedom.
“Each person who is introduced to the shooting sports and has a positive experience is another vote in favor of keeping our American heritage and freedom alive,” wrote Andry Frink, editor of Junior Shooters, in a 2012 editorial. “They may not be old enough to vote now, but they will be in the future. And think about how many lives they will come in contact with that they can impact! Each of us affects others, and it is up to us how we make an impact on the future.”
While federal law prohibits anyone under eighteen years old from owning a handgun, it’s fair to say that the gun lobby has, for better or worse, deeply embedded itself into parts of American youth culture. According to a 2015 survey by the National Shooting Sports Foundation, about 72 percent of gun owners started hunting between the ages of six and fifteen. About 1 in every 18 high students go to school armed with a gun, the American Academy of Pediatrics found in 2019.
The Washington Post observed that many states throughout the south and midwest have no age restriction on long guns (rifles and shotguns) to begin with. Given the wide swathe of literature that correlates gun ownership with household deaths and injuries, we should be especially concerned about more guns getting into the hands of kids and adolescents, Josh Sugarmann, Director of VPC, told Salon.
— Jon Skolnik in Gun manufactures quietly target young boys using social media
‘…wide swathe of literature…’ – i.e., the big lie. Spout bullshit for long enough and the bullshit can be cited as evidence of bullshit.
Yes. The circular citations fallacy is alive and well among “journalists.”
God and country parents should be very concerned about keeping their kids far away from busy body pasty mouth Gun Control nazi perverts like josh sugarman.
One in 18 goes to school armed with a gun? What poppycock!
Where did they take this survey, downtown Chitcago?
Are they promoting gun use to young boys the same way Planned (Un)Parenthood promotes abortions to young girls? Which one results in more deaths?
As Khabib Nurmagomedov would say…this is number one bullsh1t.
I was going to comment on that, too. Notice the ole bait’n’switch tactic used here. First they cite a 2015 survey that shows that most hunters started in grade school, and then they follow up with a completely unrelated study from 2019 which found a lot of high schoolers attending school “armed with a gun,” and there is absolutely no effort made whatsoever to link the two. This sort of journalistic dishonesty keeps me convinced that there is no “conversation” to be had. They believe what they believe and they have no intention of meeting anyone in any kind of middle, their goal is to brainwash, demoralize, and dominate.
“About 1 in every 18 high students go to school armed with a gun…”
Only the high students!
Went to the article and then to a link for the 1 in 18 statistic. This linked to a WebMD article that stated Bell and her colleagues analyzed data from a 1998-2017 national survey that asked ninth through 12th graders if they carried a gun in the past month. Almost 6% said they did. Nothing mentioned about carrying a gun in school.
And based entirely on self-reporting. One can imagine how many would exaggerate to portray themselves as badasses.
Gippers Ghost…Planned Parenthood’s murders are expoused as ” womens health”. They are the Eugenics crowd along with the so called Vaccine pushers.
Is this the same publication that thinks it’s stunning and brave for LGBTQRSTUVWXYZ parade goers to fist each other in front of grade schoolers and have kindergarteners sitting on the laps of registered sex offenders?
Yep, the same publication that pushes publicly funded library “Drag-queen storytime” to infants, Pre-K, and kindergarten kids.
This was my thought reading this. They’re working overtime to turn preschoolers into sexually liberated trans, bi, anything goes adults. Why do we need drag queens on freakin Blue’s Clues?
*Comment awaiting moderation. What naughty word did I use?
You probably didn’t. Word Press / TTAG’s net nanny program is truly random in it’s application of a mysterious algorithm. It happens to most of us every so often.
But a bullwhip sticking out of your ass is artwork… these people are not qualified to comment on what should be considered acceptable.
Good ole Josh Sugermann. Inventor/popularizer of the term “assault weapons” because the uninformed would confuse them with machine guns. How low does a person have to be that they can’t make their argument based on facts and have to lay out an explicit strategy of lying?
“About 1 in every 18 high students go to school armed with a gun” Maybe if the students were not high then they would not feel the need for a firearm in school….”gotta protect my stash”.
I infer that the reference is about high school students…that is not what the author actually wrote. You’d think that Salon’s editors would edit for clarity rather than the mind-numbing hogwash they typically spew.
not sure where they’re coming from with this…urban schools usually have high security…getting a gun past that is practically impossible…most kids have other things on their minds anyway…
Salon didn’t get it wrong, TTAG’s commenter misquoted the actual article.
If you go to the link provided, what you will read is this:
“About 1 in every 18 high school students go to school armed with a gun, the American Academy of Pediatrics found in 2019.”
Probably just poor grammar skills on the part of the TTAG writer.
Incompetence or conspiracy, you decide.
What I find humorous is the fact that so many people posting commenters on this article did not actually read the linked original material but rather just depended on TTAG to accurately reflect the text.
It appears many did not ‘do their research’.
I love to pretend to have some high moral standing.
It really doesn’t matter how many times I am caught in a lie or use disinformation and propaganda. Or how many times I use Non Sequitur, or strawman arguments.
As a leftist like dacian, I don’t need facts, I just need to remind ya all how Jethro ya all are and how far superior I am.
F**k liberal control freaks and their psychotic views on everything. They offend the crap outta me and I don’t give a damn what they have to say.
I don’t believe the .government or the media haven’t for a LONG time. Hell I believe a lot of you folks more than any or them.
Quick check on the time… “little d” should be along shortly with his daily report from ProgWorld .. how are the Unicorns today, das fool ??
It is just not the blind greed of the Gun Companies who have little regard for the safety and well being of our children but yesterday Exon was caught red handed in promoting propaganda that climate change was not real. In Capitalvania blind greed rules and human life is considered cheap and expendable. The rich steal all the workingman’s tax money in the form of corporate subsidies and at the same time deny sharing any of their stolen tax money (of which they did not pay any) and deny the return of some of that tax money in the form of an affordable National Health Care Plan that all civilized nations have had fore decades and they are much smaller and less wealthy than Capitalvainia.
Yes when Herr Drumpf (the Donald) pointed his finger at African Countries and called them all shit holes he had 3 fingers pointed right back at his own country that has in West Virginia a higher infant mortality rate than some African Countries that have more affordable health care and of course it shows it.
Only in a Socialist countries is the welfare of the people put above the blind greed of the Capitalvanians such as in Europe, Japan, Tawian etc etc. Even long ago paid for drugs like insulin have now risen to obscene levels and Americans are now dying like dogs in the street because they either cannot afford insulin or try to ration it and end up corpses while the greed monger Capitalvanian Republicans step over their dead corpses with bags full of blood money on their way to the bank.
Is it any wonder then that Arms companies (merchants of death) are now pandering weapons of mass murder and mass destruction to children to expand their profit resulting in dead children’s corpse’s at school shootings. This is a far cry from my remembrances when arms companies in the 40’s and 50’s showed weapons used for hunting or target shooting, often a single shot .22 rimfire for boys or a single shot shotgun for pheasant hunting with ones father. Now the Arms Companies pander “weapons of war” for mass destruction to our Nations children and think it is acceptable. Well it is not, except to far right lunatics dreaming of another Capitol insurrection to take over the government and establish a dictatorship and an all white master race society. No wonder they all worship Hitler and Herr Drumpf, his modern day protégée.
As President Lincoln once said “America is too strong to ever be defeated by a foreign country but we will in the end succeed in destroying ourselves from within” (Simplification of the actual quote to complicated for the back woods mind).
Lincoln’s actual words.
In a January 1838 speech to a group in Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln stated: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.”
Dacian with his ramblings and outbursts makes it necessary to have common sense free speech control. We will begin with a minimum background check everytime you post. All subjects you include in your post should will require a test that you must pass with a 70% or greater that you understand them. Then it will be checked by a “fact checker” any errors could lead to complete loss of free speech rights depending on the severity. Last but not least it must be checked for political correctness. Should you hurt someone’s delicate feelings you can be jailed. Because people have a right not to be offended or even feel offended. The same way they have a right to feel safe even if they are not.
Lol clown world we are living in it. Maybe you can talk some more about how much Republicans love guns yet they continue to implement gun control almost on the same scale as Democrats.
Hey dacian… maybe Ralphie will lend you his new AR. See if you can shoot your eye out with that thing.
Perhaps Dacian is trying to make Mr. Skolnik’s ranting look better by comparison?
The problem isn’t teaching kids how to handle guns. The problem is teaching kids how to hate.
Not a problem, my kids all hate leftist a$$holes like little dbag
Yup, you got it.
Not sure what this “dacian” person is referencing; I’m still working hard to find “Capitalvania” on a map. Didn’t have time to delve into the meat of the post as I had a belly button to inspect.
If there was any meat to his post, it was rotten before he pasted it in. As trolls go, he’s dismal.
I see the name dacian, I start scrolling.
Simple as that.
Usually TLDR
Dacian, shouldn’t you try to save the naugha from the evil predations of the arch-symbol of capitalist decadence known as the automotive industry? It take many naughas to make a car seat and with global car production the vast herds of naughas are nearing extinction.
LOL👍
Of course, NOTHING said in the article how the so-called “gun lobby” has pushed gun safety at home and on the range for decades – way ahead of the “gun-control” folks (who are really want gun banning anyway). I do call out and commend the NRA, NSSF, and local gun and hunting groups who for many years helping to teach our kids safe gun handling as well as the proper mindset when using a firearm. Back in the ’60’s and 70’s, I was one of those kids and I still fondly remember those times with my dad – even if I was taken to task a few times for not showing good safety habits.
I too noticed the quick insertion in the article about high school kids going armed to school right after the 75% of gun owners started hunting sentence. One has nothing to do with the other. I also would like to know the source of the 1 in 18 high school students go to school with a gun. Where the heck is THAT from? No doubt, pulled from his dark nether regions…
In other news, guns are cool. One of my favorite talking points in discussions with those who clutch pearls at the thought of innocent little kiddies slinging lead: In a study by anti-types attempting to prove Eddie the Eagle safety training was pointless, the kids that didn’t fondle firearms in both the experimental (trained) and control (untrained) groups were the kids who had firearms exposure and familiarity. Whenever someone says “Safety training isn’t necessary, we don’t allow guns in our home!” The only rational response is “How certain are you their friends’ homes are gun free zones? What if they find a heater ditched roadside by Billy Badass as he beat feet from the local constabulary?”
Teaching children about firearmn’s is a good thing. Having them shoot a lot is even better.
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1in 18 kids bring a gunm to school, well that might be right and that might be wrong. However if it’s right then school shootings ain’t as bad as statistics would have us believe.
When growing up in Alaska in the 60’s and 70’s I would take my shotgun to school with me. The teacher placed it in a locker and it was returned to us after school for the walk home, where if lucky, we would shoot a few ducks. No one thought anything about it. Harborview grade school in juneau, AK had a shooting range in the basement and parents could sign up children for marksmanship and firearm handling classes. Never a accident or shooting. todays issues have nothing to do with guns. It’s not the guns, it’s the shithead parents and kids today. Class dismissed.
I know it was a different place and time. A very rural area with old school values.
However, had anyone looked in the student parking area when I was in High School, they would have found a majority of the cars and trucks used by the students had guns in them. Anything from single shot .22’s and shotguns, to M1 Garand rifles and Winchesters.
And, yes, we had our fair share of fights amongst the kids. But, the culture of the time was you had a dispute of some type, you settled it with your fists. Even the taverns and roadside bars, fights were regular weekend events, but weapons were rarely used. Anyone pulled a weapon, there would be a dozen guys ready to stomp their butts.
The majority of us growing up in that area learned to shoot by the time we were 10 or 12. Generally received a.22 or .410 around that age. With strict rules about when and under who’s supervision we could use them. By 14, we were allowed to get a license and hunt. At 16, we could purchase our own long guns. Handguns were not common, but many of our Fathers did have pistols around.
But, We also understood very well what firearms were capable of and had respect for the power of a gun, as well as respect for each other. Something that seems to be sorely lacking in society today.
the urban view that all guns are bad seems to be in play here…growing up we knew the difference between toy guns and the real thing….one was for kids …the other for grown ups with a transition period in our teens where we went from bb guns to .22’s and shotguns if we wanted to hunt….pistols were kind of rare and, except for war trophys… usually required a reason to have one…not from the law but your friends and neighbors who would usually ask innocent questions….
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