Introducing our kids to guns is not frightening or dangerous and can be done correctly. By instilling the importance of this tool to the youth of America, they can reap the benefits for the rest of their lives. An article at The New American calls trap shooting the “fastest-growing high school sport.”
Like other past times that have returned to popularity such as gardening, canning, returning back to the days when guns in schools were normal learning tools, and not the scary object that they are portrayed as today.
The popularity of high school trap shooting in Minnesota is growing by leaps and bounds.
“By 2010, there were 340 students from around the state of Minnesota taking part in the sport. In 2012, there were 1,500. In 2014, there were 6,100.”
A video on the Minnesota State High School Clay Target League website, clearly details “in most sports, young athletes spend years honing skills that they’ll never use when they’re older. But one sport provides a gateway to a lifetime of enjoyment and expertise: shooting sports.”
Very different from other school sports, trap shooting is very safe. The video states “since the USA High School Clay Target League began in 2001, there hasn’t been a single injury to athletes or spectators, making clay target shooting the safest high school sport in the country.”
Educating our young men and women is essential, and should not limited to just textbooks, lectures, and testing. The introduction to this growing sport is not only changing hearts and minds about guns but it’s a means of learning gun safety, defining it as a tool an not a feared inanimate object. When these Boys and Girls show interest and excel in sports like these it will expand into all walks of life and demonstrate that guns are a very important part of our country’s foundation not only when our founders used them for hunting, defense of themselves, but to gain independence from a tyrannical king. As we reported in January, Gun education in Schools is slowly rising in interest with legislators even putting in bills to make them available.
“When Courtney Olson learned that her son Zac wanted to join the local trapshooting team at Lakeville South High School, she was repulsed at the idea. But once seeing him blossom into one of the school’s top shooters, she not only changed her mind but also helped Zac invest in a $1,400 shotgun and a $600 Glock 17 semi-automatic pistol as well. Andy Krebs, a classmate of Zac’s, has turned into an ardent supporter of the Second Amendment. Andy said, ‘I don’t know if I really would have been exposed to that had the team not come to the school.’ Now Andy often wears a t-shirt emblazoned with ‘Free men do not ask permission to bear arms.’”
