I recently spent an exciting two days at the Daisy National BB and Air Gun Championships in Rogers, Ark. While there, I met with many Daisy personnel, including the company president, and with dozens of competitors, their coaches and families.
Daisy is one of the big kids on the block when it comes to getting the next generation involved in shooting, but many other companies are also involved in youth efforts to ensure the future of the shooting sports and the Second Amendment.
At the championship, more than 400 young people aged 8 to 15 competed in this very family-friendly event. The smiles, competition and camaraderie were a pleasure to see. In fact, watching those kids shoot transported me back to my childhood. Like probably most Americans, certainly of my generation, I grew up with a BB gun, then an air rifle and then a .22. In my case, it created a lifelong love that has never left me.
Witnessing those youngsters in Arkansas enjoying the competition reminded me of how important it is to bring young people into the shooting sports—and to encourage them to stay active. We understandably often tend to focus on hunting, law enforcement, collecting and certainly on the legislative front. But we must never forget that long-term success in all of these arenas depends on our youth.
This is why events like the Daisy National BB Gun Championship Match are critical. The very nature of the sport requires and teaches young people important life skills, including safety, discipline, concentration, patience and responsibility—attributes essential for future success in education and whatever professions young people might later pursue.
The NRA has been actively involved in promoting shooting sports to youth since 1903.
While there are many things you and I can do personally to bring kids and youth into the shooting-sports fold, collectively, we’re already doing a lot of good work in that area. In fact, the NRA has been actively involved in promoting the shooting sports to youth since 1903. We have a wide variety of youth programs, including competitions, awards and contests, training and safety courses, scholarships and more.
One of the most well-known and successful of these programs is the Adventure Camp at the NRA Whittington Center in New Mexico. It arguably is America’s best outdoor youth camp for boys and girls aged 13 to 17. Under direct supervision of staff and trained volunteers, campers learn everything from shooting fundamentals to firearm safety, marksmanship, basic wilderness survival skills and more.
And there is much more. NRA’s Youth Hunter Education Challenge (YHEC) provides a fun environment for kids to improve their hunting, marksmanship and safety skills. Through its simulated hunting situations, live fire exercises, educational and responsibility events, YHEC helps build upon skills learned in basic hunter-education courses and encourages safer, lifelong hunting habits.
The NRA’s Home Air Gun Program brings marksmanship activities directly to communities across the country—a guide that provides parents, teachers, activity and club leaders with information and guidance on BB and airgun shooting sports.
Those are just a few of many NRA youth programs, but now I’d like to get down to a little more personal level. We all know at least one child, if not several, that we could introduce to the family-friendly pastime of shooting. Whether it be a child, grandchild, niece, nephew or just a youth from your neighborhood or that you know from church, I encourage NRA members everywhere to take the initiative and bring a youngster into the shooting sports. If each one of us introduced just one new young person to the sport, we’d grow the number of shooters by millions. What a win that would be!
For some, shooting and guns might become lifelong passions. Others might not become avid shooters, but they will still have been introduced to the fundamental principle that guns are tools, and, when used safely and responsibly, they are good, not evil, as anti-gun advocates would have them believe.
The youth shooters of today will be the Second Amendment advocates of tomorrow. As a kid, I had no idea what the Second Amendment was. But certainly, as I got older, being exposed to that BB gun and that .22 as a young teen truly did lay the groundwork for my understanding that the Second Amendment underpins our liberty as Americans.
As you begin your quest to get more youngsters involved in shooting sports, keep in mind that the child or youth that you safely and responsibly introduce to shooting today might someday be the man or woman leading the NRA a generation or two from now.
