The Official Nonsense Thread

[Minty]

"Greatest country in the world"? Arms 5 year olds, & wonders why they're full of homicidal nutters? They even have a company that makes guns specifically for children!

Uhhhhh, my head hurts!

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world...830756.cms

(The original version of this story was in the Washington Post, but it was edited to death because the NRA filed objections to it. Luckily newspapers abroad aren't so easily intimidated)

In Kentucky, where some children get their first guns even before they start first grade, Stephanie Sparks was cleaning the kitchen as her 5-year-old son played with the small rifle he was given last year. Then, as she stepped onto the front porch, "she heard the gun go off," a coroner said.

In a horrific accident on Tuesday that shocked a rural area far removed from the US debate over gun control, her son, Kristian, had fatally shot his 2-year-old sister, Caroline, in the chest, authorities said.

Kristian's rifle was kept in a corner of the mobile home, and the family didn't realize a bullet had been left in it, Cumberland County Coroner Gary White said.

"Down in Kentucky where we're from, you know, guns are passed down from generation to generation," White said. "You start at a young age with guns for hunting and everything."

What is more unusual than a child having a gun, he said, is "that a kid would get shot with it." [WTF?]

In this case, the rifle was made by a company that sells guns specifically for children - "My first rifle" is the slogan - in colors ranging from plain brown to hot pink to orange to royal blue to multi-color swirls.

Later -

The company that makes the rifle, Pennsylvania-based Keystone Sporting Arms, has a "Kids Corner" on its website with pictures of young boys and girls at shooting ranges and on bird and deer hunts. It says the company produced 60,000 Crickett and Chipmunk rifles for kids in 2008. The smaller rifles are sold with a mount to use at a shooting range.

Keystone also makes guns for adults, but most of its products are geared toward children, including books and bright orange vests and hats.

"The goal of KSA is to instill gun safety in the minds of youth shooters and encourage them to gain the knowledge and respect that hunting and shooting activities require and deserve," the website said.

No one at the company answered the phone Wednesday.

According to the website, company founders Bill McNeal and his son Steve McNeal decided to make guns for young shooters in the mid-1990s and opened Keystone in 1996 with just four employees, producing 4,000 rifles that year. It now employs about 70 people.

It also has a long list of testimonials from parents who talk about how grateful they are to be able to go shooting with their children.

Sharon Rengers, a longtime child advocate at Kosair Children's Hospital in Louisville, said making and marketing weapons specifically for children was "mind-boggling."
"It's like, oh, my God," she said, "we're having a big national debate whether we want to check somebody's background, but we're going to offer a 4-year-old a gun and expect something good from that?"