This is not a joke.
AR-15s are marketed for kids.
Guest Post by Rick Millward
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| 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!
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.
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8 comments:
This is all-too-predictable in a society of gun-worshippers. Next, they’ll be insisting on their “right” to own machine guns, like Betsy Johnson. How about Stinger missiles, while they’re at it? They need them to bring down the black helicopters that are coming for their guns.
The NRA and its devotees have been telling us we don’t have a gun problem, it's a mental health problem. They have a point. Gun nuts are crazy.
Yes- your comment is so timely Rick. See this essay today by a former ad-exec from the gun industry. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/07/firearms-industry-marketing-mass-shooter/670621/
This is the sort of thing that happens when free-market capitalism lacks a moral foundation. The only aim is growth and dominance- consequences be damned.
Virginia slaves during the Revolutionary War in the 1770’s were encouraged to rebel by the British installed governor, promising them freedom if the British won. Following the revolution, slave owners were terrified of slave rebellions, having seen the result in Haiti. The need to maintain arms to protect their right to subjugate slaves was one of the main drivers of the 2nd amendment, which, let us remember, was included in the Bill of Rights, written by slave owning Virginians like Thomas Jefferson, who owned what is euphemistically called a plantation, but in fact, was a slave labor and rape camp.
America’s original sin haunts our society in many ways.
Remember the movie "Thank you for Smoking"? The scene with three lobbyists sitting around a table, one from the tobacco industry, one from the gun rights group, and one from a state where cheese association was powerful. They were ganging up on the tobacco lobbyist because of his examples that other products are equally harmful. In a sense he was saying why pick on me when all of you at the table degrade health and cause untimely death. We got rid of a major health risk with stop smoking campaigns but the other groups were not, at that moment, attacked in the media and the public perception.
In the movie version, a group of antismoking activist kidnaped the tobacco lobbyist and treated him to an overdose of nicotine via patches all over his body then released him. In the hospital bed the lobbyist began to see the err of his ways. You can see review of the movie here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427944/
The movie might make you feel good but violating someones rights because you think they're violating your rights is a crime. So... here's an idea to explore.
If we cannot change the 2nd Amendment gun (why is that again?) or their lobby but we can make them pay by removing the protection most manufacturers face when they market a dangerous and harmful product... remove the manufacturers liability protection and allow them to be sued for misuse of their product.
A further step to take would be to federally tax ammunition these weapons require. We regulate hunting by charging a fee for a permit to take a deer, bear, elk, cougar, moose etc. Why not issue a permit to buy ammunition as well as reloading supplies, powder and manufactured bullets? Start the tax at a dollar each for him velocity rifle ammo. Pistol ammunition would require a permit to buy obtained from state law enforcement with a tax of $50/box of 50.
Ammunition sold in lots of 10 or more would require the manufacturers to apply a unique traceable mark on each bullet or pellet and casing sold to the public. The mark would be linked to the individual permit holder.
Come on lawmakers put your thinking caps on you can do this!
It is totally possible to amend the US Constitution. It has been done 27 times, most recently in 1992. All it takes is to get most of the country to agree with you. The problem for gun controllers is that a large subset of the country disagrees with you. If you believe in democracy, the task before you is clear: convince them. I would humbly suggest that starting the process by calling those people names like “gun nut” is unlikely to succeed.
People have a right to the tools they need to defend themselves. When seconds count, the police are minutes away. This is especially true in rural areas, where the police may be as much as hours away.
People who feel the way that Rick does need to understand that a significant proportion of American citizens do not share their feelings. They are not outraged by the JR-15. They most likely see it as a fun and useful way to start training their children on gun safety.
Democrats and liberals talk a lot about “diversity.” This is a large and diverse country. A significant part of it has positive feelings about firearms and the “gun culture.” Perhaps that diversity needs to be respected along with the varieties that liberals usually think about.
For those of you who think this is really very simple, and that you are going to be able to just roll over the gun culture, I suggest you read this essay.
Guns make you insane. We do have a significant large scale mental health problem in the USA, and that is the addiction to guns of all kinds. There are many rationalizations for the addiction, political, self defense, “sport”, hunting, survival and probably many more. Unfortunately there is no cure for this affliction, and it is well entrenched in our society.
I do not blame the NRA, republicans, or militias for this affliction, they are merely the obvious symptoms of the root disease. No, it’s us, the American public, who are the enablers of this disease.
Guns make you insane.
I submit for your consideration a short exposition by Constitutional Law Professor and member of Congress Jamie Raskin on just exactly the Constitution prohibits regarding Insurrection and domestic revolution of an armed attempt to tear down the Government.
https://youtu.be/FXOJ7SThLbc
Happiness is a warm gun (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm gun, momma (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
When I hold you in my arms (ooh, oh, yeah)
And I feel my finger on your trigger (ooh, oh, yeah)
I know nobody can do me no harm (ooh, oh, yeah)
Because
Happiness is a warm gun, yes it is (bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Happiness is a warm, yes it is, gun (happiness, bang, bang, shoot, shoot)
Well, don't you know that happiness is a warm gun momma?
(Happiness is a warm gun, yeah)
---The Beatles
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