Friday, May 3, 2013

Rifles for Kids

Mother Jones

Crickett rifles

On Tuesday, inside a rural Kentucky home, a five-year-old boy accidentally shot and killed his two-year-old sister. The boy had been playing with a .22 caliber single-shot Crickett rifle made and marketed for kids. The children's mother was reportedly outside the house when the shooting took place, and apparently didn't know that the gun contained a shell.

"Just one of those crazy accidents," said the Cumberland County coroner, according to the Lexington Herald-Leader.

Clearly the issue of parental responsibility is at the center of this tragedy. But against the backdrop of the Newtown massacre and ongoing national debate over regulating firearms, it also points back to the big business of guns—including how the industry profits from products aimed at children.

The Pennsylvania-based maker of Crickett rifles, Keystone Sporting Arms, markets its guns with the slogan "My First Rifle." They are available with different barrel and stock designs, including some made in hot pink to appeal to young girls.

Child abuse is what I call it.  What about you?

Please leave a comment.

12 comments:

  1. If you leave your children unattended and they injure themselves, I believe the correct charge would be child neglect and/or child endangerment.

    Having firearms safely stored in the home is not child abuse. Teaching your children how to shoot under direct parental supervision is not child abuse.

    Give the police and prosecutor's office time to investigate and press appropriate charges.

    - TruthBeTold

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    1. Oh, really. They need time to do it right? is that it?

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  2. How terrifying! These kids are smiling and can't even tell how they're being abused! They're being taught to shoot .22 caliber rifles! Ralphie was limited to .177 caliber--that's .043 inches of extra child abuse!

    Yes, the parents in the recent, tragic shooting were not properly supervising the child, but I'm not getting into that because you liberal scolds are making this a much bigger issue with Mother Jones calling these pictures unsettling, you calling them child abuse, and Lawrence O'Donnell calling them child pornography.

    Yes, these guns are made for children, horror of horrors. The general idea is to make something that they can shoot safely--you know, so they're not trying to hold onto a gun too big for them like in the case of the kid killed shooting the uzi. This way, they can be taught to shoot, and taught gun safety, on a rifle fit for a smaller frame.

    And before you ask me how that worked out for the kids in question, stuff the question. I said "can be taught." The gun doesn't magically impart the lessons, that's the parents' job--one that these folks apparently didn't do.

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    1. The lunacy of the anti-gunners has broken free of the chains of decency.

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    2. Gun control extremists are bigots plain and simple. They cannot tolerate the fact that someone, somewhere might be or think differently from them. The horror!

      Unlike Laci the Fascist, and the despicable troll that comments under the moniker "Jadegold" Mikeb should know better, yet he is the first to slip on the armbands, put on the hoods, and attack those who just happen to be different from him.

      It makes me sick.

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    3. I can tolerate the fact that you guys think differently. I just don't like it for the harm it does. In this case, indoctrinating very young kids into the sick gun culture (I know I use the word "sick" too much), does harm in the world. Many of the older kids who do things wrong with guns started out like these.

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    4. Once again, you use the word "many" when the evidence shows that, in fact, the number of people who screw up with guns is tiny.

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    5. Well, there it is. Mike is clearly tolerant of our "sick culture".

      Could an gay marriage protester make the same claim after calling them "sick"?

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  3. Since a child cant go out and buy a Cricket .22, then obviously there is an expectation of using parental guidance and supervision. In fact Kentucky currently has a safe storage law that provides for a criminal penalty for keeping a weapon that is accessable to a child.
    I actually initially at the Cricket as something to introduce my children to shooting. I didnt like the flimsy looking sights and instead chose a Ruger 10/22 and bought a youth stock so it could be fired safely by my kids.

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    1. The expectation of parental guidance and supervision is often sorely lacking. Tha's the problem.

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    2. That's a case by case problem, and is quite different from calling pictures of children with training rifles child abuse the way you did, or child pornography like the idjits on MSNBC did.

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