An appalling rumor is making its way around the web at the moment, as people ponder the very real possibility of guns manufactured specifically for kids.
America is already absolutely overflowing with firearms, and every effort to stem their flow fails, time and again. Even as survivors of school shootings line up to decry the weapons that stole the lives of their friends, and plead to save their siblings, children, and selves from more violence, we pump out guns like they’re going out of style.
New rumors of the JR-15, a rifle made for actual children, are resuscitating the gun debate that never truly rests in this country, but the discourse has taken on a new flavor. It’s one thing to talk about violent, mentally ill people shooting our kids — already a horrifying conversation — but entirely another to consider subjecting our kids to such monstrosities. Is this what we’ve come to? Distributing weapons of death to the most innocent among us?
Are JR-15s real?
It hurts my heart to write these words, but yes — the JR-15 is real. The weapons are crafted specifically for young children, boasting a “smaller, safer, lighter” structure that makes it easier for small hands to grasp. The gun is, according to its manufacturer, Wee1 Tactical, “geared towards smaller enthusiasts.”
The page for Wee1’s appalling new firearm works to frame it as a way for gun enthusiasts to introduce firearms to their kids nice and young, and boasts plenty of language about “passing on tradition” and allowing kids to use the weapons safely. Which, yes, we want our young people to be shooting safely — but we’d really prefer if they weren’t shooting at all. I grew up in the boonies, I’m all for hunting, but are you actually taking your kiddos on a hunting trip with a semi-automatic? This gun does not need to exist, in any capacity, and yet it does.
In a weirdly, horrifically, hysterical bit of irony, Wee1 requires visitors to its website to be 18+. Just in case they, I don’t know, get an introduction to guns too early? Yet it’s advertising a gun made for children. Make it make sense.
Should kids be running around with guns?
What an absolutely absurd question. Of course not! Children shouldn’t be running around with scissors — tools that can be used for a variety of purposes, including art — let alone firearms. Those are intended for only one purpose — killing — and they’ve resulted in exactly that on many occasions in which a young child got ahold of them. Between 2015 and 2022 alone, nearly 900 children got their hands on a firearm and discharged it, according to research from Every Town, and many times accidentally took a life. Sometimes it was their own life, sometimes it was the life of a sibling or a friend, but far too often child+gun=heartbreak.
Just months ago, a 6-year-old student shot and seriously wounded his teacher, further illustrating a point that in no way needs to be further explained. Guns are an adult’s tool and one that is already far, far too accessible. They should, by absolutely no stretch of the imagination, ever land in the hands of a child.
The vast majority of school shootings are carried out by people (largely men) under the age of 21. 17-year-olds are the most common perpetrators of this horrific violence, followed by 16-year-olds, according to Statistica, and they all have one thing in common — they’re young, and struggling, and they don’t truly understand the consequences of their actions.
Do you think a 10-year-old understands the cost of a poorly (or, god forbid, well) aimed bullet? No, because they literally can’t. Their brains haven’t developed enough to properly comprehend empathy, for god’s sake, and you want to put a man-killing weapon in their hands? One that takes little but some finger strength to discharge? This type of conversation should be completely out of the question, yet here we are. Rehashing the same heartbreaking discussion that’s torn our country in two for decades, but this time our children are — literally and figuratively — in the crosshairs.