The utterly contemptible Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union, is said to have made this comment:

“Give me four years to teach the children, and the seed I have sown shall never be uprooted.”

— As quoted in Pan-Sovietism: The Issue Before America and the World, Bruce Campbell Hopper, Boston and New York, Houghton Mifflin Company (1931) p. 87

Children are very impressionable and every tyrant in the world wants to get between a child and his or her parents, not out of compassion or love or respect, but simply to break the link between parent and child, and re-program the child’s mind and values to the tyrant’s liking. It’s not a surprise that the most meddlesome among us hate the idea of homeschooling or private schools because that disrupts their agenda.

American gun culture has largely been handed down from parent to child over the years. It’s common to see parents with their children at a gun range. At one of my recent range trips, I met a father whose 11-year old child could ring steel consistently at 600 yards with a 6.5 Creedmoor rifle. Children like that embody the spirit of America. The founding generation knew the importance of introducing children to guns because that’s a part of planting the intellectual seed of Liberty in the minds of children.

Federal Farmer, the anonymous anti-Federalist writer surmised to be either Richard Henry Lee or Melancton Smith, wrote the following in 1788 (archived links):

These corps, not much unlike regular troops, will ever produce an inattention to the general militia; and the consequence has ever been, and always must be, that the substantial men, having families and property, will generally be without arms, without knowing the use of them, and defenceless; whereas, to preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them…

Thomas Jefferson, writing to his 15-year-old nephew Peter Carr in 1785, said (archived links):

“As to the species of exercise, I advise the gun. While this gives a moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise, and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body, and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be the constant companion of your walks. Never think of taking a book with you.”

Rev. Timothy Dwight V, 12th President of Yale University, said the following on why the ownership of guns is harmless in relation to other factors, and why a well-rounded education is important for a well-functioning society:

To trust arms in the hands of the people at large has, in Europe, been believed…to be an experiment fraught only with danger. Here by a long trial it has been proved to be perfectly harmless…If the government be equitable; if it be reasonable in its exactions; if proper attention be paid to the education of children in knowledge and religion, few men will be disposed to use arms, unless for their amusement, and for the defense of themselves and their country.

Gun controllers want to break this proud heritage and tradition of gun ownership. Hence the deceptive focus on “marketing guns to kids” even though everyone knows that children simply cannot walk into a gun store and buy anything. 

This has been going on for a while. At the federal level, Democrats have gone after the JR-15 repeatedly. In California, Gavin Newsom has made a lot of noise about it and signed a law to that effect.

As Cam wrote recently, it’s now Illinois’ turn to act out its inner California. Gov. J.B. Pritzker has pledged to sign into law a bill banning advertising for firearms that “officials determine produces a public safety threat” or appeals to children, militants [meaning you and me] or others “who might later use the weapons illegally.” Of course, it’s Illinois, so we know how those who use weapons illegally are treated with kid gloves while the proposed law attacks the gun industry instead.

The pretext as always is “public safety,” and their end goal is the destruction of gun ownership in the next generation, thus rearing a nation of obedient sheep instead of free citizens. You can see the pattern playing out elsewhere too; for instance, the Biden Department of Education is cutting funding for schools with hunting and archery programs. 

If you’ve had enough, it’s time to fight back on not just the “core” gun rights territory, but opening a second front in education. As I have written before, Second Amendment supporters also pay taxes that fund public schools. Schools need to accommodate our interest in preserving the right to keep and bear arms by instituting firearms instruction in schools, whether in deep-blue areas or out in the countryside. If they won’t accommodate us, it will be time to defund and privatize government schools. We shouldn’t be forced to participate in a schooling system that brainwashes our children into adopting values we oppose.