{"id":28830,"date":"2012-07-09T06:00:15","date_gmt":"2012-07-09T11:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=28830"},"modified":"2012-07-08T09:08:55","modified_gmt":"2012-07-08T14:08:55","slug":"and-it-wont-be-nearly-as-noisy-as-chuck-e-cheese-either","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=28830","title":{"rendered":"And It Won’t Be Nearly As Noisy As Chuck E. Cheese, Either"},"content":{"rendered":"

Where was this when my <\/em>kids were that age? \u00a0A Dallas entrepreneur is building a\u00a0family-friendly gun range<\/a>\u00a0to help teach the next generation of Real Americans [1].<\/p>\n

“One of the reasons we’re doing this is, when I had my boys, I didn’t have a place to take them and educate them about how to handle a gun safely,” Prince explained. “I really want families to be able to take their kids here and teach their young shooters how to shoot safely.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

No kidding.<\/p>\n

Two rooms will be available for birthday parties.<\/p>\n

“The age limit is eight years old. You have to be tall enough to get above the shooting table,\u201d Prince said. \u201cThey’re not gonna be left unattended. Parents are gonna be one-on-one, or if there’s not enough parents we’ll have range safety officers here to show them how to do it safely.”<\/p>\n

“We’re gonna do a lot of education here at this range,” he added.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The thing non-shooters never get? \u00a0It can be <\/em>great education. \u00a0Shooting, done right, focuses the mind like any martial art – which, indeed, it is. \u00a0 With proper supervision – we’ll come back to that – it can be a great thing to teach kids.<\/p>\n

And, this being Texas, there’s a better than even chance most people get that:<\/p>\n

The kickoff party Friday drew a big crowd and Prince was being well-received by his neighbors in Lewisville.<\/p>\n

Denton County Commissioner Hugh Coleman said he was happy to have the facility in Lewisville.<\/p>\n

“I am thrilled to add jobs and add to the tax base, and I think gun rights are for everyone,” he said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But even in Texas, there are enclaves of Orcs:<\/p>\n

But some see things in a different way. Dawn McMullan is a mom raising two sons in East Dallas, and she’s done some gun control advocacy in the past.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

[And her past as a “gun control advocate” makes her precisely<\/em> the least-informed, least-competent person to comment on the subject]<\/p>\n

“It makes me very nervous,” she said. “I think eight-year-olds, developmentally, can’t tell the difference between play and reality sometimes.”<\/p>\n

“And also to put it in a party or game atmosphere just seems to not respect a gun as much as we should respect guns,” she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Ms. McMullan has apparently never met a competent Range Safety Officer (RSO). \u00a0If good RSOs taught reading, there’d be <\/em>no illiteracy.<\/p>\n

And as re mixing kids and guns? \u00a0The dispositive factor in kids’ growing up with warped attitudes about gun violence is not <\/em>“having shot”. \u00a0It’s “do his parents have a criminal record”, or “does anyone with a record live in the house”, and\/or “is there someone in the house with a drug or alcohol problem”, or maybe “is someone in the house so addled that they leave guns lying around where kids can get at them in an idle or dumb moment?”<\/p>\n

And even then – who’s going to teach the kids to leave the gun and walk away? \u00a0Someone who shows them the destructive power behind a gun, and then shows them painstakingly to walk away and tell a (competent) adult? \u00a0Or Ms. McMullan and her whole “guns are the forbidden fruit” schtick? \u00a0Hint, Ms. McMullan: that works especially <\/em>well with teenagers!<\/p>\n

But Prince said respect is exactly what he’ll be teaching.<\/p>\n

“We truly believe it’s a right and a privilege to shoot and to bear arms,” he said. “But you have a responsibility to know how to do it well. It’s your responsibility to know how to take care of your gun and know how to use it.”<\/p>\n

“Ignorance is not bliss in this situation,” he added. “Until they outlaw guns, people are gonna have access to them and should have access to them. And they need to be educated. Take the mystery out of the guns.”<\/p>\n

Eagle Gun Range expects to open for business sometime in the late summer or early fall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m smelling bonanza for some savvy Minnesota entrepreneur – and apoplectic strokes for not a few Minnesota lefty pundits. \u00a0Just saying.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

[1] I know, I know – there’s all sorts of confusion as to what “Real Americans” actually means. \u00a0Its definition is “American citizens who exercise their God-given Second Amendment right<\/a>, and obligation to keep, bear, and be proficient at arms”.<\/p>\n

Glad we could clear that up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Where was this when my kids were that age? \u00a0A Dallas entrepreneur is building a\u00a0family-friendly gun range\u00a0to help teach the next generation of Real Americans [1]. “One of the reasons we’re doing this is, when I had my boys, I didn’t have a place to take them and educate them about how to handle a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28830"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28830\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28833,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28830\/revisions\/28833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}