[Bumped to discuss resulting legal actions] Elementary school shooting in Connecticut. (Edit/Update - 26 reported killed, many of them children)

Parents of children massacred in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting are stepping up their anti-gun violence campaign by exposing how the firearms industry is marketing weapons of war specifically to vulnerable adolescents.

In a fresh stage in their battle to staunch the rising loss of life from mass shootings, Sandy Hook parents are pressuring gun manufacturers to stop what they say is a cynical and aggressive effort to sell military-style weapons to young and impressionable Americans. They are alarmed by a shift in tone in gun advertising in which, they say, major companies have consciously decided to boost profits by targeting kids as young as 10.

“They are telling lonely and isolated children, ‘This is what you need to be a man, this is what’s going to make you powerful, this is how you avenge yourself on those who bullied you – you need an AR-15,’” said Nicole Hockley, CEO of the Sandy Hook Promisefoundation.

Hockley’s youngest son, Dylan, was six when he was murdered in the December 2012 Sandy Hook shooting in Newtown, Connecticut. He was one of 20 six- and seven-year-olds gunned down, along with six adult staff.

The new Sandy Hook pressure campaign, dubbed Untargeting Kids, comes at a critical time in the US with mass shootings and gun deaths among those under 19 increasing at startling rates. Between 2019 and 2021, firearm deaths among US children and teens rose by 50%, making them the leading cause of death for these age groups above even car accidents.

This year has also seen a record high of 327 school shootings, according to the National Center for Education Statistics – double the year before. Overall, mass shootings are becoming both more frequent and more deadly, according to the Violence Prevention Project.

A growing number of those tragedies are perpetrated by young males aged 21 and under.

At the same time, sales of the AR-15 semi-automatic assault rifle have soared, making the weapon the best-selling rifle in the US, with about one in 20 US adults owning at least one, according to the Washington Post.

The new Sandy Hook campaign follows the group’s successful lawsuit against Remington, maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle that was used by the Newtown shooter. The suit forced Remington and its insurers to settle for $73m, tipping the company into bankruptcy.

Critically, Remington was also obliged to hand over thousands of documents revealing its inner workings and strategy. The trove revealed that in 2011, a year before Dylan and the other Sandy Hook victims were killed, the Cerberus Capital venture company that had bought Remington and other gun companies came up with a new ambition – to create “America’s foremost firearms empire”.

A memo titled 2011 Planning Creative Brief that was discovered among the disclosed documents laid out the plan. It specified the demographic groups that were to be targeted, including “Millennials” and “Youth”.

At the time the memo was written, millennials were aged between 10 and 14.

“These were kids who were not legally old enough to buy a firearm, but they were preparing the market ahead – and that’s really disturbing,” Hockley said. “In the last 10 years, it’s gotten significantly worse, with firearms specifically designed for child-sized hands and much more aggressive marketing on social media.”

An example of the trend is the social media message that was posted on 24 May 2022 by Daniel Defense, one of the largest privately owned firearms manufacturers. It consisted of a photo of a young boy, maybe aged six, with a large assault rifle across his lap and an extended clip on the floor beside him.

An adult’s finger is pointing down at him, with the caption: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it.”

On the same day that message was posted, an 18-year-old shooter armed with an M4 carbine produced by Daniel Defense entered the Robb elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, and killed 19 children and two teachers.……….

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...aign-marketing-to-kids?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other