Ah the ol' gun debate. It's never a pretty one. When a small town's youth football league had a fundraising raffle to raise money for sport equipment one of the businesses that was offering a free gift to raise money for the team promised to have a rifle available as a top prize to incentivize people to spend money on a chance to win one of the many prizes being offered in the raffle and this just happened to be a local gun store.
Although I could predict that this could happen, this squeaky wheel definitely got the grease when a woman who made certain to remain anonymous, decided to go to the press to express her disdain for the fact that a rifle was being offered to support a children's sport league.
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It probably didn't help that the weapon in question was the "dreaded" AR-15 and I can't help but think that there was a least a little bit of trolling that was going on when it was decided that this would be the particular firearm that would be offered. For many gun grabbers, this is probably the only firearm that they even know the name of and of course, they refer to it as an "assault rifle" or "assault-style rifle" if they were trying to be a bit more honest.
When it hit the news, it quickly spread across the nation and went around the world via social media and soon the East Henderson Youth Football program was being attacked by people who weren't even familiar with the situation, firearms in general, or even football. There was a bunch of pressure for the league to remove the item from their raffle but thankfully they did not buckle and the raffle remained as it was originally intended.
The people who got all worked up about the raffle, which is completely legal by the way, tended to not actually be anywhere near East Henderson, or even North Carolina. They also did what I feel has sadly become a tendency of the left leaning population, when they decided to dox the gun store owner, the people in charge of the football league, and even the kids on the teams that had nothing to do with the organization. What could possibly go wrong when you tell a world of online crazies where the teams are practicing?
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For the most part, the people of North Carolina that I am familiar with, were supportive of the kids and also the raffle and it was nice to see that in addition to the harassment that they received across the nation was met with an outpouring of support as well. NC is an unusual state in that it is one of the purple ones. We are not all blue or red, but have a population that is split on the issues politically. We voted for Obama and Trump and our state elected officials are normally around a close even split on representation across the right and left. We all kind of get along although I will admit that a great deal of this has to do with our geographic separation in the state.
The league refused to buckle from the pressure and kept the raffle as it was originally intended despite the mostly online outrage that a rifle would be offered as a prize for a children's league. It's not like the winner of the raffle can be just anyone, you have to be legally capable of obtaining it after the fact but some of the people getting upset online were treating it as the league was handing out firearms to children on the football field. These voices expressing this concern and outrage are clearly not gun owners and their words made it obvious that this was the case. The only thing they focused on was the fact that guns have at some point in time been used to kill children - which obviously is tragic but was not the intent of the fund raiser.
I commend this group for, ehem, sticking to their guns on this issue and am even more delighted to see that the increased attention that this story has gotten them has made their fundraiser more successful than they ever dreamed.
For all the people out there crying about the AR-15 being offered as a prize here's an idea: Put your money where your digital mouth is. How about buying a bunch of the raffle tickets and when you win, take the prize, and destroy it. That would be your right and it would bring a lot more attention to your side of the cause in the meantime. This would certainly be a lot more effective than denouncing and doxing little kids who just want to have some new equipment to play a sport they love.
To me, that is pretty cool. I wouldn't mind my children getting into a sports competition to win a gun, that would be sweet!
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well therein lies the problem. A lot of people seem to think that they are giving away a gun to a child and that is not the case at all. People under 18 are allowed to buy rifle tickets but just like they wouldn't give a car to a 12 year old, they won't give the gun either. The raffle winner needs to legally qualify to own the gun as well and children do not qualify. I'm sure there are tons of people out there that think that it is a competition among kids and the winner gets a rifle. nope.
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