[Lamplighter]

This 4-page article is the first in a new series on the gun industry in the US.

NY Times
MIKE McINTIRE
1/26/13

Selling a New Generation on Guns

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!”
<snip>


The overall objective was summed up in another study, commissioned last year by the shooting sports industry,
that suggested encouraging children experienced in firearms to recruit other young people.
The report, which focused on children ages 8 to 17, said these “peer ambassadors”
should help introduce wary youngsters to guns slowly, perhaps through paintball,
archery or some other less intimidating activity.
“The point should be to get newcomers started shooting something,
with the natural next step being a move toward actual firearms,”
said the report, which was prepared for the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Hunting Heritage Trust.
<snip>