This article is excerpted from the NYTimes as a public service to stimulate further discussion on topics of national importance
BEARING ARMS
This is the first in a series of articles that will examine the gun industry’s influence and the wide availability of firearms in America.

A junior shooter receiving tips on a military rifle last fall from an Army marksmanship instructor at a clinic at Fort Benning, Ga. Youth shooting clinics and competitions often receive financial support or supplies from firearms-related businesses.

Michael Molinaro/United States Army Marksmanship Unit
By MIKE McINTIRE, The New York Times
Published: January 26, 2013

Threatened by long-term declining participation in shooting sports, the firearms industry has poured millions of dollars into a broad campaign to ensure its future by getting guns into the hands of more, and younger, children.

The industry’s strategies include giving firearms, ammunition and cash to youth groups; weakening state restrictions on hunting by young children; marketing an affordable military-style rifle for “junior shooters” and sponsoring semiautomatic-handgun competitions for youths; and developing a target-shooting video game that promotes brand-name weapons, with links to the Web sites of their makers.

The pages of Junior Shooters, an industry-supported magazine that seeks to get children involved in the recreational use of firearms, once featured a smiling 15-year-old girl clutching a semiautomatic rifle. At the end of an accompanying article that extolled target shooting with a Bushmaster AR-15 — an advertisement elsewhere in the magazine directed readers to a coupon for buying one — the author encouraged youngsters to share the article with a parent.

“Who knows?” it said. “Maybe you’ll find a Bushmaster AR-15 under your tree some frosty Christmas morning!”

The industry’s youth-marketing effort is backed by extensive social research and is carried out by an array of nonprofit groups financed by the gun industry, an examination by The New York Times found. The campaign picked up steam about five years ago with the completion of a major study that urged a stronger emphasis on the “recruitment and retention” of new hunters and target shooters.

The overall objective was summed up in another study, commissioned last year by the shooting sports industry, that suggested encouraging children experienced in firearms to recruit other young people. The report, which focused on children ages 8 to 17, said these “peer ambassadors” should help introduce wary youngsters to guns slowly, perhaps through paintball, archery or some other less intimidating activity.

“The point should be to get newcomers started shooting something, with the natural next step being a move toward actual firearms,” said the report, which was prepared for the National Shooting Sports Foundation and the Hunting Heritage Trust.

Firearms manufacturers and their two primary surrogates, the National Rifle Association of America and the National Shooting Sports Foundation, have long been associated with high-profile battles to fend off efforts at gun control and to widen access to firearms. The public debate over the mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and elsewhere has focused largely on the availability of guns, along with mental illness and the influence of violent video games.

Little attention has been paid, though, to the industry’s youth-marketing initiatives. They stir passionate views, with proponents arguing that introducing children to guns can provide a safe and healthy pastime, and critics countering that it fosters a corrosive gun culture and is potentially dangerous.

The N.R.A. has for decades given grants for youth shooting programs, mostly to Boy Scout councils and 4-H groups, which traditionally involved single-shot rimfire rifles, BB guns and archery. Its $21 million in total grants in 2010 was nearly double what it gave out five years earlier.

Newer initiatives by other organizations go further, seeking to introduce children to high-powered rifles and handguns while invoking the same rationale of those older, more traditional programs: that firearms can teach “life skills” like responsibility, ethics and citizenship. And the gun industry points to injury statistics that it says show a greater likelihood of getting hurt cheerleading or playing softball than using firearms for fun and sport.

Still, some experts in child psychiatry say that encouraging youthful exposure to guns, even in a structured setting with an emphasis on safety, is asking for trouble. Dr. Jess P. Shatkin, the director of undergraduate studies in child and adolescent mental health at New York University, said that young people are naturally impulsive and that their brains “are engineered to take risks,” making them ill suited for handling guns.

A Utah gun show last year. The gun industry spends millions promoting recreational shooting for children.

George Frey/Bloomberg News, via Getty Images

“There are lots of ways to teach responsibility to a kid,” Dr. Shatkin said. “You don’t need a gun to do it.”

Steve Sanetti, the president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, said it was better to instruct children in the safe use of a firearm through hunting and target shooting, and engage them in positive ways with the heritage of guns in America. His industry is well positioned for the task, he said, but faces an unusual challenge: introducing minors to activities that involve products they cannot legally buy and that require a high level of maturity.

Ultimately, Mr. Sanetti said, it should be left to parents, not the government, to decide if and when to introduce their children to shooting and what sort of firearms to use.

“It’s a very significant decision,” he said, “and it involves the personal responsibility of the parent and personal responsibility of the child.”

Trying to Reverse a Trend

The shooting sports foundation, the tax-exempt trade association for the gun industry, is a driving force behind many of the newest youth initiatives. Its national headquarters is in Newtown, just a few miles from Sandy Hook Elementary School, where Adam Lanza, 20, used his mother’s Bushmaster AR-15 to kill 20 children and 6 adults last month.

The foundation’s $26 million budget is financed mostly by gun companies, associated businesses and the foundation’s SHOT Show, the industry’s annual trade show, according to its latest tax return.

Although shooting sports and gun sales have enjoyed a rebound recently, the long-term demographics are not favorable, as urbanization, the growth of indoor pursuits like video games and changing cultural mores erode consumer interest. Licensed hunters fell from 7 percent of the population in 1975 to fewer than 5 percent in 2005, according to federal data. Galvanized by the declining share, the industry redoubled its efforts to reverse the trend about five years ago.

The focus on young people has been accompanied by foundation-sponsored research examining popular attitudes toward hunting and shooting. Some of the studies used focus groups and telephone surveys of teenagers to explore their feelings about guns and people who use them, and offered strategies for generating a greater acceptance of firearms.

The Times reviewed more than a thousand pages of these studies, obtained from gun industry Web sites and online archives, some of them produced as recently as last year. Most were prepared by consultants retained by the foundation, and at least one was financed with a grant from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.

In an interview, Mr. Sanetti said the youth-centered research was driven by the inevitable “tension” the industry faces, given that no one under 18 can buy a rifle or a shotgun from a licensed dealer or even possess a handgun under most circumstances. That means looking for creative and appropriate ways to introduce children to shooting sports.

“There’s nothing alarmist or sinister about it,” Mr. Sanetti said. “It’s realistic.”

Pointing to the need to “start them young,” one study concluded that “stakeholders such as managers and manufacturers should target programs toward youth 12 years old and younger.”

“This is the time that youth are being targeted with competing activities,” it said. “It is important to consider more hunting and target-shooting recruitment programs aimed at middle school level, or earlier.”

Aware that introducing firearms to young children could meet with resistance, several studies suggested methods for smoothing the way for target-shooting programs in schools. One cautioned, “When approaching school systems, it is important to frame the shooting sports only as a mechanism to teach other life skills, rather than an end to itself.”

In another report, the authors warned against using human silhouettes for targets when trying to recruit new shooters and encouraged using words and phrases like “sharing the experience,” “family” and “fun.” They also said children should be enlisted to prod parents to let them join shooting activities: “Such a program could be called ‘Take Me Hunting’ or ‘Take Me Shooting.’ ”

The industry recognized that state laws limiting hunting by children could pose a problem, according to a “Youth Hunting Report” prepared by the shooting sports foundation and two other groups. Declaring that “the need for aggressive recruitment is urgent,” the report said a primary objective should be to “eliminate or reduce age minimums.” Still another study recommended allowing children to get a provisional license to hunt with an adult, “perhaps even before requiring them to take hunter safety courses.”

The effort has succeeded in a number of states, including Wisconsin, which in 2009 lowered the minimum hunting age to 10 from 12, and Michigan, where in 2011 the age minimum for hunting small game was eliminated for children accompanied by an adult mentor. The foundation cited statistics suggesting that youth involvement in hunting, as well as target shooting, had picked up in recent years amid the renewed focus on recruitment.

Gun companies have spent millions of dollars to put their recruitment strategies into action, either directly or through the shooting sports foundation and other organizations. The support takes many forms.

The Scholastic Steel Challenge, started in 2009, introduces children as young as 12 to competitive handgun shooting using steel targets. Its “platinum” sponsors include the shooting sports foundation, Smith & Wesson and Glock, which donated 60 9-millimeter semiautomatic pistols, according to the group’s Web site.

The site features a quote from a gun company executive praising the youth initiative and saying that “anyone in the firearms industry that overlooks its potential is missing the boat.”

Larry Potterfield, the founder of MidwayUSA, one of the nation’s largest sellers of shooting supplies and a major sponsor of the Scholastic Steel Challenge, said he did not fire a handgun until he was 21, adding that they “are the most difficult guns to learn to shoot well.” But, he said, he sees nothing wrong with children using them.

“Kids need arm strength and good patience to learn to shoot a handgun well,” he said in an e-mail, “and I would think that would come in the 12-14 age group for most kids.”

Another organization, the nonprofit Youth Shooting Sports Alliance, which was created in 2007, has received close to $1 million in cash, guns and equipment from the shooting sports foundation and firearms-related companies, including ATK, Winchester and Sturm, Ruger & Company, its tax returns show. In 2011, the alliance awarded 58 grants. A typical grant: 23 rifles, 4 shotguns, 16 cases of ammunition and other materials, which went to a Michigan youth camp.

The foundation and gun companies also support Junior Shooters magazine, which is based in Idaho and was started in 2007. The publication is filled with catchy advertisements and articles about things like zombie targets, pink guns and, under the heading “Kids Gear,” tactical rifle components with military-style features like pistol grips and collapsible stocks.

Gun companies often send new models to the magazine for children to try out with adult supervision. Shortly after Sturm, Ruger announced in 2009 a new, lightweight semiautomatic rifle that had the “look and feel” of an AR-15 but used less expensive .22-caliber cartridges, Junior Shooters received one for review. The magazine had three boys ages 14 to 17 fire it and wrote that they “had an absolute ball!”

Junior Shooters’ editor, Andy Fink, acknowledged in an editorial that some of his magazine’s content stirred controversy.

“I have heard people say, even shooters that participate in some of the shotgun shooting sports, such things as, ‘Why do you need a semiautomatic gun for hunting?’ ” he wrote. But if the industry is to survive, he said, gun enthusiasts must embrace all youth shooting activities, including ones “using semiautomatic firearms with magazines holding 30-100 rounds.”

In an interview, Mr. Fink elaborated. Semiautomatic firearms are actually not weapons, he said, unless someone chooses to hurt another person with them, and their image has been unfairly tainted by the news media. There is no legitimate reason children should not learn to safely use an AR-15 for recreation, he said.

“They’re a tool, not any different than a car or a baseball bat,” Mr. Fink said. “It’s no different than a junior shooting a .22 or a shotgun. The difference is in the perception of the viewer.”

The Weapon of Choice

The AR-15, the civilian version of the military’s M-16 and M-4, has been aggressively marketed as a cool and powerful step up from more traditional target and hunting rifles. But its appearance in mass shootings — in addition to Newtown, the gun was also used last year in the movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo., and the attack on firefighters in Webster, N.Y. — has prompted calls for tighter restrictions. The AR-15 is among the guns included in a proposed ban on a range of semiautomatic weapons that was introduced in the Senate last week.

Given the gun’s commercial popularity, it is perhaps unsurprising that AR-15-style firearms have worked their way into youth shooting programs. At a “Guns ’n Grillin” weekend last fall, teenagers at a Boy Scout council in Virginia got to shoot AR-15s. They are used in youth competitions held each year at a National Guard camp in Ohio, and in “junior clinics” taught by Army or Marine marksmanship instructors, some of them sponsored by gun companies or organizations they support.

ArmaLite, a successor company to the one that developed the AR-15, is offering a similar rifle, the AR-10, for the grand prize in a raffle benefiting the Illinois State Rifle Association’s “junior high-power” team, which uses AR-15s in its competitions. Bushmaster has offered on its Web site a coupon worth $350 off the price of an AR-15 “to support and encourage junior shooters.”

Military-style firearms are prevalent in a target-shooting video game and mobile app called Point of Impact, which was sponsored by the shooting sports foundation and Guns & Ammo magazine. The game — rated for ages 9 and up in the iTunes store — allows players to shoot brand-name AR-15 rifles and semiautomatic handguns at inanimate targets, and it provides links to gun makers’ Web sites as well as to the foundation’s “First Shots” program, intended to recruit new shooters.

Upon the game’s release in January 2011, foundation executives said in a news release that it was one of the industry’s “most unique marketing tools directed at a younger audience.” Mr. Sanetti of the shooting sports foundation said sponsorship of the game was an experiment intended to deliver safety tips to players, while potentially generating interest in real-life sports.

The confluence of high-powered weaponry and youth shooting programs does not sit well even with some proponents of those programs. Stephan Carlson, a University of Minnesota environmental science professor whose research on the positive effects of learning hunting and outdoor skills in 4-H classes has been cited by the gun industry, said he “wouldn’t necessarily go along” with introducing children to more powerful firearms that added nothing useful to their experience.

“I see why the industry would be pushing it, but I don’t see the value in it,” Mr. Carlson said. “I guess it goes back to the skill base we’re trying to instill in the kids. What are we preparing them for?”

For Mr. Potterfield of MidwayUSA, who said his own children started shooting “boys’ rifles” at age 4, getting young people engaged with firearms — provided they have the maturity and the physical ability to handle them — strengthens an endangered American tradition.

Mr. Potterfield and his wife, Brenda, have donated more than $5 million for youth shooting programs in recent years, a campaign that he said was motivated by philanthropy, not “return on investment.”

“Our gifting is pure benevolence,” he said. “We grew up and live in rural America and have owned guns, hunted and fished all of our lives. This is our community, and we hope to preserve it for future generations.”

A version of this article appeared in print on January 27, 2013, on page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Selling a New Generation on Guns.

ZD30’s Jessica Chastain (Maya) and Jason Clark (Dan), soaking up adulation at a Hollywood event.

Blowback via Hollywood
“Zero Dark Thirty” as an Anti-American Propaganda Film
by BOB SCOFIELD
David Bromwich has written an articulate and informative essay on “Zero Dark Thirty” in the Huffington Post. I wish to continue from the last two sentences of Bromwich’s essay: “But the deadpan narrative of extrajudicial killings is not going to be experienced in the same way everywhere.  It will play differently in Pakistan.”

I do not see many mainstream films and, as it turns out, my experience with “Zero Dark Thirty” was influenced by what I thought was the extraordinary number of previews that came before the main feature.  With the exception of a preview of a movie about Jackie Robinson, all of the previews were extremely violent.  They showed shootings, colliding cars, fighting robots, and clouds of uprising flames as cars were blown up.  These previews helped form my first impression of “Zero Dark Thirty.”  Initially I didn’t see it so much as a political flick as just an ordinary Hollywood attempt to make money on a suspense thriller.  Putting the preview of the Jackie Robinson film aside, “Zero Dark Thirty” fit nicely with the previews.  There were shootings with blood coming from the victims, there were people being blown up in bomb attacks, there was torture and, perhaps most fitting from a commercial point of view, a great shot of clouds of flames rising in the air after the Navy Seals blew up a disabled helicopter in Osama Bin Laden’s compound.  I believe that the main purpose of “Zero Dark Thirty” is to make a lot of money by addressing the contemporary American movie audience.

One thing is clear, however, and that is that such a movie would have been unthinkable during the Cold War.  When the U.S. was competing with the Soviet Union and vying for the allegiance of other countries, especially among the non-aligned nations, an American movie would not have had the Americans acting as torturers.  As someone born in 1947 it is ever more clear to me that I am no longer living in the country where I was born.  Think for example of the fairly recent “The Lives of Others.”  What appeared to be the great fear produced by the communist-totalitarian bad guys, the Stasi, was sleep deprivation.  But the good guys in “Zero Dark Thirty” not only dish out sleep deprivation, they dish out much more.  Someone might object that the difference between the good guys and the bad guys is that the bad guys threaten their own innocent citizens with sleep deprivation, while the good guys only threaten (some) foreign terrorists with sleep deprivation plus.  The torture of innocent persons at Gitmo creates problems for that objection.  So maybe the objection would be that the bad guys work on their own citizens, while the good guys work only on foreigners. But my point is that whatever the good guys are doing they would not have been portrayed as torturers during the Cold War when many of us old people were growing up.

The movie is superficial.  The competition between the C.I.A. and Al Qaeda is like a tribal vendetta.  There is no analysis of how American imperialism and global dominance might trigger attacks on the U.S., nor even of how the political systems in the Middle East might give rise to terrorist movements.

From the movie’s point of view the problem starts with the attack on the World Trade Center.  One thing in the movie’s favor is that it doesn’t force us to watch, yet again, the collapse of the twin towers.  But we do hear a heart rending recording of a phone call from a woman trapped in the twin towers, while the screen is blank.  This recording helps motivate a need for revenge.  The woman feels heat rising from below, and says that she is going to die. Thus this movie about torture starts with an innocent American being tortured by Osama Bin Laden’s agents.  And  later in the movie, after we’re exposed to the torture handed out by the Americans defending their homeland, mostly by C.I.A. agents Dan and Maya, we’re given video shots of some terrorist attacks throughout the world.  Thus there is a constant reminder of the need for revenge and immediate action.  (The revenge might especially be called for because some of Maya’s C.I.A. friends were killed by a suicide bomber.)

The movie’s superficiality and lack of historical context makes it an American film.  If the movie is meant to be something more than a Hollywood attempt to make a lot of money, then the film’s superficiality becomes stupidity.  By use of the word “stupidity” I mean that this superficial film, clearly directed at an American audience, has the potential in foreign countries of becoming an anti-American propaganda film.  In my opinion stupidity characterizes what other calls “strategy” in American foreign policy and military action over the last several decades.  As I sat and watched I wondered how the various scenes would play out before foreign audiences.  There is a scene with Pakistanis protesting in front of an American embassy.  It’s not a smart scene as it reminds people that throughout the world there is a revulsion toward the U.S. among many people.  And to make matters worse this demonstration has to do with Pakistanis being victimized by drone strikes.

I agree with Bromwich that the film will play differently in Pakistan.  How will it play in Britain?  The United States broke off from Britain in part to create a freer country.  The great Bill of Rights was one result.  But now we see the Tories refusing to extradite criminal suspects to America out of a concern that the suspects will have their human rights violated.

The movie will not play well in lot of other countries, and the problem will not always have to do with torture.  There are some disconcerting scenes depicting the C.I.A.’s ability to listen to phone calls and watch buildings and people throughout the world. Despite all the controversy about torture, “Zero Dark Thirty” has the potential to scare the world-wide public with the image of the U.S. as a menacing big brother.

A theme in the movie is that the “detainee” interrogations, torture, led to the identification of the identity of a person who eventually led the C.I.A. to Bin Laden’s hideout.  But a video clip shows that Obama has become president, and he announces that the U.S. will not use torture.  Then later in the film there are statements by C.I.A. agents indicating that without the detainee interrogations their hands are tied, at least to some extent.  In this dialogue Maya, the heroine, makes a comment about detainees at Gitmo “lawyering up.”  In my view, this underscores the very American nature of this film as it shows the disregard for the rule of law exhibited by the United States during both the Bush and Obama  administrations.  And again, this disregard for rule-of-law values may not sit well with foreign audiences.

Another bit of dialogue that grabbed my attention was Maya’s claim that Bin Laden was still (post 911) ordering attacks on the U.S.  I recall reading that Bin Laden was not ordering attacks on the U.S. and was disinclined to do so unless such an attack would result in the great expenditure of U.S. government resources in response.  I do not claim to know the truth about the matter, but portraying Bin Laden as an ongoing immediate threat helps to create tension and the necessity for the torture and zealotry we see.

When it comes addressing the American movie audience “Zero Dark Thirty” is not superficial.  I’ve already given some examples such as the creation and sustaining of a need for revenge, and the sense that there is an immediate need for action.  Another example comes in dialogue toward the end of the movie.  Several C.I.A. agents are meeting with director Leon Panetta and Panetta asks for an assessment of probability that Osama Bin Laden is in the compound in Abbottabad.  The government is trying to decide if the C.I.A. intelligence is strong enough to justify some type of action at the compound.  Various statements of probability come from the meeting participants.  Dan, for example, states that there is a sixty percent chance that Osama is at the compound.  For Maya the estimate is a loud one hundred percent.  But then she lowers it to ninety-five percent with the snide remark that the others present “do not like certainty.”  The movie audience has the benefit of historical hindsight, and knows that Osama was in the compound. Thus Maya’s zealous certainty resonates with the audience.  This part of the movie should appeal to the various fans of certainty such as, for example, fundamentalist Christians, some Tea Party folks, authoritarians and many patriots.  The movie’s controversy has to do with torture, but the film is foul in other ways.

As much as I respect David Bromwich’s essay I have a small disagreement with it.  Bromwich makes the following statement. “‘Zero Dark Thirty’ portrays the torture-agents as essentially good people: technicians, working at a grim but unavoidable job.  Nowhere do we catch a whiff of sadism or racism or, with the exception of Maya, strong feeling of any kind.”  There are whiff’s of sadism from the good guys.  One whiff comes from two scenes showing Dan with his monkeys.  At a torture compound there are some monkey cages.  In one scene Dan is eating an ice cream cone and sharing small bits of ice cream with the monkeys.  At the end of the scene a monkey grabs a bigger chunk of ice cream.  Dan looks startled at first, but then breaks into a big smile.  He likes his games with caged animals. Later in the movie Dan tells Maya that he’s going back to Washington as he is burned out.  During this scene we see that the monkey cages are empty and Dan complains that “they’ve killed my monkeys.”  The joy of sporting with caged animals is gone.  But at least while it was there Dan was a sadist.

If the government or the movie industry were to ask me, my advice would be not to distribute this film outside the U.S.  But Americans do not do strategy.  Outside the homeland, “Zero Dark Thirty” has a great potential to play as an anti-American propaganda piece.

Bob Scofield can be reached at scofield@omsoft.com.