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Selling a New Generation on Guns by The New York Times

January 27, 2013

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A junior shooter receiving tips on a military rifle last fall from an Army marksmanship instructor at a clinic at Fort Benning, Ga. Youth shooting clinics and competitions often receive financial support or supplies from firearms-related businesses. Photo by: Michael Molinaro/United States Army Marksmanship Unit

By MIKE McINTIRE, THE NEW YORK TIMES

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!”

Read the entire article at nytimes.com

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