"Who knows? Maybe you'll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!"
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"Who knows? Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!"
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.
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!”
Let's hope not. I think the pressure is building on gun manufacturers and retailers to reforrm -- the "Sandy Hook principles" as espoused by Mayor Nutter is a great way to pressure investor-minded firms (like...Wal-Mart) just as the Sullivan principles (also straight outta Philly) helped mark the beginning of the end of apartheid. Congress -- with its plethora of blue-dog Democrats -- is going to be a longer struggle. But hopefully today's "Junior Shooters" will emerge into a safer tomorrow.
No one person in the Sandy Hook murders was shot by a 223 round. All the people were killed with handguns.— Gone Sovereign- Nutter: you should learn the prinicpals of how to be a mayor of a big city,before you get involed with the gun debate.— aguckin
- You'll shoot your eye out kid— wayne michael
- Jared Loughner used a Glock-19 and fired 31 bullets in a 30-round magazine (extra bullet stored in chamber) in about 15 seconds. He killed 7 and injured 12 others before being subdued.
Seung-Hui Cho used a Glock-19 and a Walther 22 killed 32 people and injured 17 others. These weapons were purchased online 9glock) and at a pawn shop (walther), along with full metal jacket ammo and other assorted ammo from Walmart, Dicks Sporting Goods, eBay and chains from a Home Depot.
James Holmes used a Remington Model 870 Tactical rifle, a Smith & Wesson M&P15 with a 100-drum magazine, 2 Glock-22 handguns and a tear gas grenade. Holmes was wearing a load-bearing vest, a ballistic helmet, bullet-resistant leggings, a throat protector, a groin protector and tactical gloves. He killed 12 and injured 58 others in less than four minutes.
Adam Lanza killed 27, including 20 elementary school kids, using a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle, a Glock 10mm and a Sig-Sauer P226 9mm. An Izhmash Canta-12 12-gauge shotgun was taken from the trunk of Lanza's car.
At about 9:35 AM, using his mother's Bushmaster, Lanza shot his way through a locked glass door at the front of the school. He was wearing black clothing, earplugs and an olive green utility vest carrying magazines for the Bushmaster.— wokmaster - You just mentioned four violent mental cases who committed horrendous crimes, and who are now heroes to your anti-gun faction. The four were mental cases, but none was reported to the authorities, so they would be included in the NICS database. There are laws in force right now prohibiting such individuals from owning, carrying or operating a gun. There are laws prohibiting such individals from purchasing ammunition. There are laws prohibiting murder that date back to 3,600 BC. There are laws prohibiting carrying weapons in "no-gun zones", and there are laws prohibiting breaking and entering. Yet, all four of your "heroes" broke all these laws. What will a half-dozen new laws do to stop the next one? Or, will they simply become yeat another half-dozen more laws to break while committing a crime? — DonQ
- For you to call these killers anyone's "heroes" shows how sick you are. Rarely do we hear from you, thankfully so, except when the subject of gun control is broached. Then you jump to the defense of gun manufacturers and their powerful lobby, the NRA. Sickening.
You and the other people who have a creepy infatuation with guns want more of the status quo. Your answer to these massacres is and was to DO NOTHING. The point that you and the other gun worshipers ignore is that NOBODY needs this much firepower - except our military. It should come as no surprise that you chose to gloss over how easily these psychos purchased their weapons and why anyone should legally be able to purchase an arsenal which can inflict heavy casualties in a short period of time.
It's obvious what gun freaks like yourself want: a society that looks like the picture above.— wokmaster - You call me sick? I was not the one narrating the exploits of your "heroes", who gave your faction opportunities to "not to let a tragedy go to waste." You say nobody needs this firepower, but this is most surely because YOU have never needed it. Did I gloss over how easily these psychos got their weapons, or did you? There are dozens of laws in the books prohibiting these psychos from even touching a gun, yet, they had them. Perhaps some day you will learn that passing a law prohibiting people from buying a gun is like passing a law prohibiting people from buying a bottle of booze. Remember Prohibition? — DonQ
- "I was not the one narrating the exploits of your "heroes", who gave your faction opportunities to "not to let a tragedy go to waste."
These are talking points straight from the NRA. Yawn.
Anyone who would refer to these psychopaths as "heroes" is a sicko. Congrats, you're the first that I've ever heard use that term - in any context. Maybe your worship of guns is insidious enough to actually make you believe it? Maybe gun worship is a mental disease? Who knows but it is an obscene statement to make.
I sat back and kept relatively silent while these shootings were becoming more frequent and more deadly. When I read about 20 first graders being riddled with anywhere between 3 to 11 bullets, in their elementary school, that was it...enough! Calling that some kind of opportunity just shows the extent to which you value guns over people. Sick.
As to the laws already on the books, THEY SUCK because of people like you who fight every one of them until they pass with no teeth. So do the laws that the President has proposed.
"You say nobody needs this firepower, but this is most surely because YOU have never needed it."
This is comical. Other than our men and women in the military and say, SWAT Teams, who needs a 100-drum magazine? Who needs the Remington 870 tactical? Who needs tear gas grenades? Who needs a Bushmaster? Please give a compelling reason why Joe Shmo needs this type of weaponry.
— wokmaster - since they are worth about 2 grand wish i had gotten one for christmas— rysagr
- Well then, ban earplugs.— Mr. Smith
- Anyone who thinks kids in their early teens can be trusted with a firearm needs to spend more time with kids in their early teens.— philapat
- I took at least 500 kids in their early teens to the rifle range in my 15 years as a Boy Scout leader. We didn't have a single accident. Not one. — DonQ
- "We will never have the elite, smart people on our side..."
-Rick Santorum, perfectly describing Mr. Smith and rysagr.— wokmaster - thanks wok — rysagr
- Wok, thank you for calling me elite and smart.— Mr. Smith
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