[It] Operates Just Like Mom And Dad’s Gun.

 

Training the next generation of mass shooters.

On December 14, 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza shot and killed 26 people at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty of the victims were children between six and seven years old, and six were adult staff members. Earlier that day, before driving to the school, he shot and killed his mother at their Newtown home. As first responders arrived at the school, Lanza committed suicide by shooting himself in the head. 

On November 15th, a Connecticut Superior Court judge in the United States, ruling in a defamation case filed by Sandy Hook families, found right-wing Infowars radio host and conspiracy theorist Alex Jones liable for damages for broadcasting a false conspiracy theory that the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut was a “staged” hoax. The Connecticut ruling came six and a half weeks after an Austin, Texas judge came to the same conclusion, ruling that Jones displayed a pattern of bad faith in dealing with four lawsuits by parents of two children killed in the 2012 mass shooting.

On February 14, 2018, 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz opened fire on students and staff at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 people and injuring 17 others. Four years and a day from the Parkland School Shooting, a different Connecticut Court action filed by families of the Sandy Hook victims against arms manufacturer Remington, now in bankruptcy, was settled for $73 million. The landmark victory came after a protracted legal battle over how Remington marketed its Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle, which was used in the December 2012 killings.

In a statement to the Newtown Bee on February 18th, Po Murray, chair, Newtown Action Alliance puts this all in perspective: “Finally, a gun manufacturer and their insurers have been held accountable for the gun violence crisis in our nation. No amount of settlement dollars will bring back the Sandy Hook families’ children and loved ones but their lawsuit against Remington has given other families of shooting victims some hope that they too can pursue justice in the courts… 

“AR15s are the weapons of choice for mass shooters. The gun industry and the gun lobby have worked for years to convince Americans that AR15s are ‘modern sport sporting rifles’ when in reality they are nothing more than weapons of war that are being used to hunt our children and loved ones in our schools, places of worship and other public places all across America. Recently, the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF) allowed a gunmaker to showcase JR-15s, AR15s made for children at its annual SHOT Show. [see below] Yesterday was the four-year mark of the Parkland school shooting tragedy, when a 19-year-old gunman used an AR15 to kill 17 students and teachers and injure 17 others. We know firsthand that one AR15 can cause significant damage to an entire community in a matter of minutes.

“In 2005, the National Rifle Association, NSSF, and the gun industry made passing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) their number one priority. Since PLCAA was signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2005, the gun manufacturers, dealers, and sellers of firearms or ammunition, as well as trade associations, have been vastly shielded from civil action for the use of their products. Thankfully, the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) allowed the Sandy Hook families to pursue their lawsuit. We urge other states to pass Unfair Trade Protection laws. PLCAA continues to block the ability of families from many states to have their day in court; therefore we urge Congress to immediately repeal PLCAA.”

The lessons of these and many more shootings suggest strongly that Americans who love guns love them more than their own children. As the rest of the developed world remains aghast at our American gun culture, right-wing support for ubiquitous gun ownership – including open and even concealed carry almost everywhere – has never been more pronounced. Until what turned out to be a 2008 rogue but growing Supreme Court distortion of the precedents cited by Justice Antonin Scalia (Heller vs District of Columbia), the United States had never had a high court ruling that the Second Amendment, clearly focused on citizen soldiers (“militia”), stood for a universal right to possess firearms. See my November 8th How Time and a Highly Politicized Supreme Court Repealed and Replaced the Second Amendment blog for the ugly details.

But nothing illustrates this toxic American obsession more than the introduction of a child-sized AR-15 to teacher those youngsters how to shoot an assault rifle. Writing for the February 17th FastCompany.com, Talib Visram sets up the recent history and explores the formal introductory marketing of this bizarre weapon: “Between August and December 2021, there were 136 instances of gunfire on school grounds, the highest rate in a 5-month period since the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety began tracking it in 2013. And 70% of school shooters, many of whom have easy home access to weapons, are under the age of 18.

“Given this backdrop of ever-increasing gun violence, and especially by young perpetrators, the release of a new rifle directly marketed to kids has astonished even gun-reform experts who have followed the industry’s aggressive targeting of children for years. They say this new firearm, overtly advertised as a kids’ version of the AR-15—the style of rifle used in 11 of the 12 most high-profile mass shootings, including Sandy Hook and Las Vegas—is the most brazen example of such targeted firearms marketing they’ve ever seen. The move is part of a trend by an unstable gun industry in a volatile market to target new potential consumers, but it’s also motivated by a rise of political extremism.

“Last month, the JR-15, or Junior 15, debuted at the SHOT Show, billed as the nation’s largest annual trade show for the sport shooting, hunting, and outdoor industry. The event is organized by the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), a firearms industry trade association. The rifle is manufactured by WEE1 Tactical, an offshoot of Schmid Tool and Engineering, which has sold AR-15 components for 30 years. A November press release from WEE1 specifically notes the JR-15’s appeal to children: ‘Our vision is to develop a line of shooting platforms that will safely help adults introduce children to the shooting sports,’ it reads. To do that, it’s built a gun whose ‘ergonomics are geared towards children’: it’s lighter than an adult version, at 2.2 pounds, 20% smaller, and with a patented safety mechanism, not standard on AR-15s, which needs to be pulled out ‘with some force’ and rotated before it can fire. Slight tweaks aside, the company boasts that it ‘operates just like Mom and Dad’s gun.’” Yup, “sports shooting” with a gun totally focused on killing people… to see how many human beings you can kill with a single magazine.

I’m Peter Dekom, and it is nothing short of amazing how none of the facts set out above has the slightest impact on a huge American right-wing unwilling to accept gun control at any level.