How are we looking for the long-term with the younger generations?

[luzyfuerza]

I became an NRA instructor so that I would have the credentials to teach organized groups of kids (like boy scouts, and 4H members) how to shoot. Most of the good work, however, will be done one-on-one with our friends, neighbors, and relatives.

If we act together, we can win this battle. Take a CCW class and get your permit. Learn to shoot blackpowder/shotgun/pistol or whatever you don't shoot now. Take your kids, your nieces and nephews, brothers, sisters, etc. to the range when they come to town to visit. If we all do this for just ten people IN OUR LIFETIMES, imagine how the political landscape would change in the coming decades!

 

[the 22 junkie]

Coming from a 9th grader, unless you cure the ignorance, WE ARE ******! And yes I tend to notic the most people at my school who consider themselves anti-gun are ruch urban white liberals. Introducing MTV barf: ) kids to guns can be a bit tricky, becuase of the negative stereotypes associated with them, but it can be done. I find usuallythe biggest problem when introducing kids to guns are the parents. Hoplophobic, nanny-statist, rich, white, parents. Just about a month ago, I was going to take a friend out to shoot some cans on the farm, when we asked his mom if that would be okay with her if we had adult supervision while doing that, and she seemed kind of borderline, and asked to see the gun. We bring out my dainty little Model 63, and she takes one look at it and shudders. "I don't want my son anywhere near that thing" She almost had a heart attack when I told her I was allowed to wear it on my hip by myself, anywhere on the farm. It's a good thing I didn't tell her I keep a black rifle cased in my room, she probably would've dropped stone dead. So I find non-trusting over protective parents to be the cuase of most of my headaches, and who hardly EVER listen to any kind of logic. Like the other mother who wouldn't let their kid play at my house, becuase we had guns in there, but let her kid play down the street at a nieghbors house with a pool, EVEN AFTER I pointed out that their kid is 100 times more likely to die from a pool than a gun. I guess the idea of a 13 year old actually using logic and reputable sources to back his claims up was to mind boggling for her, so she decided just to play the whole, "I'm older than you and you are wrong" card. Fine then, she better not come to me though when she gets attacked by looters in a hurricane or has her house firebombed by MZB's. :banghead:

 

[Diomed]

At some point, that’s going to be the first of the generations that right now are more or less rooted into giving the middle finger to authority and anyone trying to tell them how to live their lives.

Or alternately, they are perfect conformists: their peer group acts like punks, so they act like punks. They only appear anti-authoritarian because the way that they express their conformity is not readily understandable outside their peer group. They're indoctrinated like anyone else, and the "O noes, real gunz r badz!!!!11!!one!1" line of "thinking" will get accepted by most without question once they are suitably exposed to it. When they outgrow the trappings of juvenile orthdoxy, they'll be completely pliant little worker-sheep. One just has to use more sophisticated methods of propaganda and control than have been effective in the past, thanks to an advertisement-saturated culture. There are always individuals who don't follow the masses, of course, so they can be sought out and exposed to our radical ideas, but they're a few pebbles in an avalanche.

Forgive me if I have little faith in the younger generation. I've spent too much time around them to think otherwise.

 

[Dr. Dickie]

The problem, the whole problem, everything for me comes down to this:
There is mindset that I have seen take over this country over the last 30 years, and that is, "The government should do something about that."

People that I hear talking, or talk to have a mindset that the government is the SOULTION to all problems--look at Katrina.
This is, of course, in direct opposition to the founding fathers who felt that, with the exception of the limited powers laid out in the Consitution, the government was the SOURCE of all problems.
The number of laws we have in this country is out of control, and the people call for more to fix the problems created by the last batch.
Public education and the ignorance (duplicity) of the media is the reason for all of this. Most folks have no clue, no clue at all, as to the principles this country was founded on, or why the Constitution was framed the way it was, or that it was apposed by many, or why they apposed it. The 17th admendment is part of the problem (we nearly are a democracy, and that is NOT a good thing), self-absorption and the growing complexity of society is making things worse. People willingly turn over more control to the government so that it makes their life easier. If you believe in the Constitution, you are an anti-government nut. Yes, we need a bigger federal government than we had in 1787, but DAMN. Do I need the government telling me I cannot have a little barbeque grill on my back porch, it has to be 10 feet from any overhanging structure (I saw that on the news last night).
Even we count sucess when the government "favors" us with good-gun legislation.
Al Queda is not the biggest threat to this country, the appeasing socialists gaining power would then make Al Queda the biggest outside threat.
The biggest threat to this country is ignorace and apathy, and friends as much as I hate to admit it, that is one tough nut to overcome. Yes, try to get the next generation interested in shooting, I do. But make no mistake, if we cannot correct the direction, that will only mean that more people will have their rights taken away when the day comes.

 

[Dr. Dickie]

The problem, the whole problem, everything for me comes down to this:
There is mindset that I have seen take over this country over the last 30 years, and that is, "The government should do something about that."

People that I hear talking, or talk to have a mindset that the government is the SOULTION to all problems--look at Katrina.
This is, of course, in direct opposition to the founding fathers who felt that, with the exception of the limited powers laid out in the Constitution, the government was the SOURCE of all problems.
The number of laws we have in this country is out of control, and the people call for more to fix the problems created by the last batch.
Public education and the ignorance (duplicity) of the media is the reason for all of this. Most folks have no clue, no clue at all, as to the principles this country was founded on, or why the Constitution was framed the way it was, or that it was apposed by many, or why they apposed it. The 17th amendment is part of the problem (we nearly are a democracy, and that is NOT a good thing), self-absorption and the growing complexity of society is making things worse. People willingly turn over more control to the government so that it makes their life easier. If you believe in the Constitution, you are an anti-government nut. Yes, we need a bigger federal government than we had in 1787, but DAMN. Do I need the government telling me I cannot have a little barbeque grill on my back porch, it has to be 10 feet from any overhanging structure (I saw that on the news last night).
Even we count success when the government "favors" us with good-gun legislation.
Al Queda is not the biggest threat to this country, the appeasing socialists gaining power would then make Al Queda the biggest outside threat.
The biggest threat to this country is ignorance and apathy, and friends as much as I hate to admit it, that is one tough nut to overcome. Yes, try to get the next generation interested in shooting, I do. But make no mistake, if we cannot correct the direction, that will only mean that more people will have their rights taken away when the day comes.

 

[PCGS65]

by Soybomb, Youth are really the same as they've ever been on the whole. Urban people are less likely to be taken out shooting and thus they're more likely to base their gun beliefs off main stream media and movies. Take a kid shooting and thats the biggest part of the battle.

You mean like this? Here's my urban son out in rural america having "a blast"

 

[lionking]

I see shooting sports and firearm enthusiasm continuing into the future.I live (for now) where its predominantly hispanic,have become friends with a few hispanics and taken them out shooting,so race really has nothing to do with love of shooting sports....neither does choice of music jeez.

And with all due respect to what is called the "greatest generation" of WWII,if you look at my thread "they deserve a raise" it shows that todays and hopefully future generations are willing to sacrifice and I believe that if needed todays America (and allies)would accomplish what the WWII generation did again.

 

[the 22 junkie]

bump (nt)

<bump> nt

 

[Gord]

That would be my generation. 18 here.

My family's always been gun-friendly. My great-grandfather started me out on his knee at age 5 with an ancient little BB gun I still keep in my safe, though it's broken, and throughout my childhood, Dad would take me out to shoot alone or with friends (his, not mine - not many kids in the neighborhood). I'm now a raging gun nut and perfectly happy with myself. My family and friends, through their exposure to me, are all quickly going over to the "hey, guns are cool" side...

But.

Talking to friends online (instant messaging generation, y'know), the two trends I'm noticing are that, firstly, there's the drive amongst younger teens, and some older ones, to be different and counterculture and rebellious - this means lots of Che shirting, Bush bashing liberal alignment without really knowing what they're doing, or what they're saying. They're trying to be different and establish themselves as outside social norms. That's what teenagers do. Wisdom comes with age, and a lot of these kids are going to change as they get older. Eventually, at least some of them will ditch the Che shirts and the berets and the hammer-and-sickle flags and come to their senses...

...and, secondly, a lot of the hippie-liberal crowd (and a lot who aren't) are fine with firearms on the face of things, but they don't think of them as tools or useful objects - for all intents and purposes, they're "videogames that go bang". This is where we need to be focusing, in my opinion. Just about any young teen these days has grown up playing all the usual stuff - Grand Theft Auto, Counterstrike, whatever military sim the Xbox 360 guys are hyping as next-gen this week - and they tend to think of guns as cool toys and not much else. They don't really comprehend the deadliness intrinsic to something that spits out lumps of jacketed lead at high velocities; they just focus on the "boom" and the puff of dust downrange.

To a lot of younger people, the RKBA simply doesn't exist. The concept of a gun as a tool, an icon of an inalienable human right, is over their heads. There was an article posted here a while back, wherein some lefty college kids got their hands on an "XKS sniper rifle" and hilarity with tupperware ensued. Now, we've got a bunch of urban white art-student kids out in a field with a gun - and they're okay with it. They're playing with it, taking turns shooting with it, and generally doing things other than pissing their pants or trying to nudge it into a raging bonfire with a long pole while hiding behind a rock.

But they know nothing about it, screwing up something as simple as "SKS" (and, if I recall correctly, they fudged the caliber too): because, to them, it's just a gun "or whatever."

And that's the key.

Don't just take your kids out shooting; don't just introduce your college roomie to punching paper; you need to teach them what it means to be armed, whether on their person or in their homes, and how deeply important it is to realize that a gun is a weapon, a tool, something capable of preventing bad things from happening, whether on the scale of a single dark alleyway or an oppressive national government.

Young people these days have been exposed to guns enough to be okay with them - but they're really just fun to play with. That's it. They need people older and wiser than they are to open their eyes to the idea of guns as useful tools and lifesaving implements and protectors of liberty, personal and national.

If you ask a kid these days what he thinks about guns being banned, you're going to get a shrug and a "meh" - there will always be new toys to replace them, and they don't shoot guns much anyway, so whatever, they're just gonna go home and "play some Gamecube, alright dude?"

What we need to do is impart in their minds the distinction between toys and a human right. They need to understand the gravity of what holding that little chunk of metal in their hands does. They need to look at it with fresh eyes as something more than a plaything, or something mundane and unimportant like a gardening spade or a fire extinguisher.

(This applies to the under-18 crowd; once they get to Berkeley and start eating their profs' crap, all bets are off.)

 

[GaryP]

So -- How many Teachers' Organizations in the USA are RKBA friendly? None that I know of and this is, as I see it, a major problem for the RKBA in the not to distant future in the USA! Our children are constantly being bombarded by their teachers with negative information and mostly doctored statistics in reference to firearms from the day they enter the education system. This is where we need to focus our attention or eventually lose the WAR!

Hitler and Clinton were Cunning Masters in regards to how to approach this issue for maximum effect --- "Brainwash the Country's Youth at the earliest possible age" via the National & Local education systems and we as free Americans should recognize and remedy this situation before it is too late!

My .02C worth!

 

[jeepmor]

I don't have a lot of faith in the youngsters

But then again, my parents generation did not have a lot of faith in me either. But now that I'm 30 something, I know how my parents felt and that's just the generation gap, and it's completely normal. Regardless, dad took the time to take us shooting. But he never really pushed, we are free because of guns or anything, but he did take us out to plink enough to get us doing it on our own.

The kids will turn out alright with proper direction and huge doses of patience on our part, the older generation. I can relate to these kids, I watched the internet generation be born and grow up. The information we need to get to them is easy to deliver with the internet, THR is proof of that. More importantly, how do we steer them our direction. I take a neighbor kid and his friend shooting about once a month. We don't really discuss the politics behind guns much because, well, kids don't think that way yet, so I don't push it. However, one of them wants to be a leo and both of them are pretty darn good shots with my 45 and .223. They'll get there, we just have to be consistent with our message and arguments for our position. Kids are feisty, and when they think a lot, they can bring some really good arguments to the table when they have no job to take up their big chunks of time. I miss being a kid, we went shooting all the time, it was great fun. Many an alder tree perished from my buddy's 20 gauge pistol grip shotgun.

Me, I give the "Americans are free and stay free because of guns" speech. I then explain my limited knowledge of history and how the prohibition of guns started the revolution that is responsible for us being free.

And yes, I think the rich white urbanites are the problem, particularly those in California and the movie business. These people live in an environment devoid of wildlife and natural order, yet nearly all of them eat meat. They don't make the connection of freedom and sustenance that firearms represents becasue their too damn interested who's winning on all those stupid reality shows. The only reality show I have any respect for is Survivorman...and that bloke never carries a gun on the show, which in most of his endeavours, would make his survival a bit easier. And oh yeah, Nugent's show is pretty good too.

jeepmor