This is not a joke.
AR-15s are marketed for kids.
Today's guest post shares a glimpse into a part of gun culture. Rick Millward is a singer, songwriter, and music producer. He saw an advertisement for an AR-15 for kids. He thinks it is a sign that gun culture in America has gotten out of control. He writes that the 2nd Amendment makes that possible, and that it is past time to change it.
Guest Post by Rick Millward
You might think this is a Saturday Night Live spoof. No. This is America in 2020.
If you haven't heard about this, let me be the first to tell you about this "toy" that is sparking controversy and outrage among anti-gun activists. A company in Indiana named WEE1 Tactical (get it? "Wee one") makes and sells the "JR-15," a scaled-down replica of an AR-15. It fires 22-caliber bullets--real bullets--and it is marketed to children.
Here's a page from its brochure, noting that it "looks, feels, and operates just like Mom and Dad's gun." There is a cartoon boy and pigtailed girl skull with a target X over one eye. Lethal fun!
A firearms industry newsletter gives details and photographs of the rifle. The JR-15 comes with a 10 and 15 round magazine. It claims a safety feature, a pill-bottle type knob that must be pulled "with some force" and turned.
Links to WEE1 Tactical go to an email link, not the company itself. I’m not surprised they have a low profile. A gun advocacy group, The Truth About Guns, predicted the gun was "Sure to get the antis’ knickers in a bunch." It did. A gun safety group formed out of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the Newtown Action Alliance, condemned "The callousness of the National Shooting Sports Foundation to promote a children's version of the same type of assault rifle that was used in a horrific mass shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators in our shared community." I share the outrage at the special privilege that guns have in America. You may remember that lawn darts are banned because they are too dangerous for children, but apparently these guns are ok.
The U.S. has more guns per person than any other developed country. This reflects a belief and tradition based on the weirdly worded Second Amendment to the Constitution.The Second Amendment can be read to support whatever belief you might want. Two giant constituencies have formed. One interprets the language as intended to give the right to states to have a militia, a citizen army, to defend against a tyrannical federal government. The other believes the language bestows a completely unfettered “right to bear arms” to individuals. That is the one this Supreme Court adopted. The result is ubiquitous guns, even for kids.This view of a gun-packing citizenry is so dark and primeval it’s hard to reconcile with the brilliant technological, creative and culturally rich society that put a man on the moon, cured diseases, and has generally improved the human condition. Presumably this would mean universal disarmament, but in America it means the exact opposite. No one questions the need to defend oneself and one’s nation against a world with many dangers, but there is a point where prudence becomes paranoia. Guns aren't the solution. They are the problem. Consider the incidents of road rage. Consider the incidents of domestic violence. Consider the number of mentally ill on our streets. Of course all of them have access to guns. This is America. Everyone has access to guns.
The only use for a military style weapon is to kill another person. A marketing strategy that promotes their distribution to civilians demands a population at war with itself. It requires that we all be terrified of each other and armed, a twisted vision of “freedom." And let's recognize what has been made blindingly obvious by this advertisement. Gun culture has gone crazy in America and it is past time to scale it back. AR-15s for kids!
There is a solution: Revise the Second Amendment with language that reflects the reality of the 21st Century, where one weapon has more firepower than an entire colonial army.
This is both bizarre and grotesque. Gun culture got out of control some time back, now we are in a different dimension of utter madness. This would have been bad enough if the gun didn’t shoot bullets.That it does, is beyond the limits of my imagination.
I agree. Michael Moore has written an alternative to the second amendment that I find reasonable. Alternatively, let's take an originalist position on interpreting the Constitution ( as the current Supreme Court seems to be so fond of doing these days) and allow people to only own the kinds of guns the framers had. Rather primitive ones that took awhile to reload after each shot, and required that the shooter make their own bullets.