The un-funny Trevor Noah did a shtick on the Daily Show about the bill making its way through Iowa that would allow children under the age of 14 to shoot handguns while under direct supervision of an adult.
His coverage of the bill was embarrassingly bad.
“Currently, kids in Iowa can use long guns legally for target practice, or murder, or hunting.”
Yes, he said that. The rest of the bit got worse from there. I wished the horror of just how out of touch with reality that was, was due entirely to Trevor Noah’s lack of comedic talent. But it wasn’t. This was a case of art imitates life.
During legislative debate over the bill, Rep. Kirsten Running-Marquardt (D) said “What this bill does, the bill before us, allows for 1-year-olds, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds to operate handguns. We do not need a militia of toddlers.”
Really!?! Because that’s not what happens in real life. I know.
I started shooting with my dad at about 7 years old. The only gun we owned at the time was some war trophy my grandfather brought back from the European Theater and was called “Grandpa’s 32.” I was sold off years ago and I have no idea what it was. But that was the gateway drug that got my dad and me into shooting. After that, there was a long string of target pistols including an old Beretta 22 of indeterminate vintage and a Taurus revolver that never hit to point of aim. That evolved into a wonderful collection of guns that now numbers greater than the number Trevor Noha’s fans. He got into hunting, I didn’t, and it all started with pistols. Some of my best memories as a kid are of shooting with my dad.
My story is not unique. There are many, many kids in quite a lot of states who shoot handguns safely, some far better than many adults.
This isn’t murder. This isn’t a militia of toddlers. This is Americans enjoying a constitutionally protected sport as a family. If you want to talk about safety, Pee Wee Football has the worst injury rate for any sport played by kids. If you really wanted to protect children, don’t let them play contact sports.
I get that anti-gunners are going to shill because that’s what they do. But their lies have become so bald faced, that it makes you wonder what color the sky is in the world they live in.
Their sky is the color of unicorn farts and skittles. Just who in the hell, other than BSC Joan*, gets their news from a comedy channel?
*Bat Shit Crazy Joan from Minnesota.
My son is only 8 months old, so I have a year or two before I need to teach him the basics of safety. But, I’d like to not be committing a crime when I show him how to safely handle an SR22.
And, his Mom is far more in favor of him going with me to shoot IDPA or USPSA than playing football.
You married so right…..
Football wrecks the knees and ankles pretty quickly. Shooting sports build upper body strength and teach discipline, coordination, and estimation skills. Not a hard choice to make in the long term.
Meanwhile, in the beautiful and civilized state of Alabama, I will be challenged in a USPSA match (and probably TROUNCED!) by a lovely little 10-year old girl whom I’ll call K. K shoots like Julie Golob, and looks a lot like Julie when she was young.
That precious girl has been coached by her former-Grand-Master grandfather since she was, wait for it, SEVEN YEARS OLD. K shoots a .40-caliber open gun, moving and shooting like she OWNS it. And to see her scores, she DOES own it; she beat the match director on the last classifier stage at our club!
Curse these un-funny idiots who do not know what life is like outside their disarmed, infantile bubbles.
Any idea how many IDPA, IPSC or other competitors have ever gotten a concussion in the sport? I’d imagine it’s zero point zero, but I couldn’t prove that.
It’s far safer to let your kid shoot competitively than play football.
I can tell you the number of injuries I saw during my 13 years of IDPA: 3.
They were all heat exhaustion under the Florida sun. I was one of them.
There was also a heart attack, no fatality. But that was not the sport but the hard headed shooter who had a bad ticker and came to a match against his doctor’s orders. Two weeks later he went to a State Match and had to be taken in ambulance again… so he gets a “Dedicated Shooter” award.
Ragging on people in the South and Midwest is a guaranteed boost if your audience is mostly urbanites and those who want to be them.
Please cut Trevor some slack. He’s just concerned that the next little boy he tries to lure into his dressing room for that “audition” will light his ass up.
We’ve had guns in the house since before our daughter was born in ’09. Neither myself nor my wife grew up around them, and while I didn’t have any firm convictions either way (I did some shooting in Boy Scouts, long before anyone thought that cross-eye dominance might be the reason I couldn’t hit jack), she was always against them, until my sister-n-law and brother got us out to a range. Ever since our daughter was old enough to learn how to ask, she would point to a rifle on the wall (she loves the Mosin) and ask to hold it. So I would stop what I was doing, have her sit down, ask where I should point it, and rack the bolt back for her to look down. She’d pull the trigger and dry-fire it a couple of times, giggle, and then go on to something else. At 4 years old, we took her to some friends’ land in Oklahoma, and during a break in the shooting, I was on the line and looked over to where she was standing and asked if she wanted to try. She nodded, we made sure her eye and ear pro were good, and she shot her first .22 handgun. I still have one of the casings from that shoot, and some from more recent shoots as well. Will she grow up to be another Julie Golob? No idea. Will she grow up knowing how to be safe around guns and what to expect and/or do with one? Hell yes.