Straight Arrow News contributor Jordan Reid argues the FTC must step in and ban these dangerous marketing practices.
Now, gun manufacturers have always marketed to children. That’s nothing new. But this effort to indoctrinate children not only into gun ownership but into assault rifle ownership — tactical weaponry — is insane.
Look at these ads from the past few years — ads which I should know Democratic lawmakers and gun safety groups are using to try to push the FTC into setting guardrails for the industry, just as they did with RJ Reynolds.
These aren’t about protection or hunting or responsible gun ownership. They’re about assault. Getting your man card? What?
Wee1 Tactical holds that the goal of the JR-15, which they refer to as a “youth training rifle,” is to teach kids responsible safe gun ownership. But the leap of logic I can’t seem to make is how training children to responsibly use a type of weapon that very visibly has not been used responsibly by adults makes a ton of sense.
And the advertising is so effective. Gun sales in this country are astronomical. And as a new generation of indoctrinates grows older, or I guess just big enough to pick up a 2.2-pound semi-automatic, it’s only going to become more pervasive.
Last July, after Nancy Pelosi showed Wee1 Tactical’s marketing materials on the House floor, Marjorie Taylor Greene suggested that perhaps if the children who died in the Uvalde school shooting had been armed with their own JR-15s, that would have solved the problem, tweeting, “At least they could have defended themselves since no one else did while their parents were held back by police.“
I do think that history will prove this to be an inflection point much as with Joe Campbell. Despite years of evidence to the contrary, I still cannot believe that the FTC will not step in and address the blatant marketing of deadly weaponry to children. If big tobacco can be taken down, so can the NRA. Let’s go.