Think Disney, but with guns. Conservative blogger Amelia Hamilton has been writing fairy tales for the National Rifle Association in which guns are inserted into the classic children’s stories, The New York Times reported on Saturday. Some creative titles include “Little Red Riding Hood (Has a Gun)” and “Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns).”
The new stories tell their respective fairy tales fairly accurately. But in “Little Red Riding Hood (Has a Gun),” the main character was given a rifle for her birthday, and Grandma uses a gun to intimidate the wolf until law enforcement arrives. In “Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns),” the two siblings are out hunting game for their family when they come across the witch’s candy house. The siblings then rescue two boys, with Gretel standing guard with her rifle beside the sleeping witch.
Hamilton told “CBS This Morning” that she wrote the stories to inform children and adults about gun safety. She also told NRA News that she thought of the children in fairy tales as teenagers old enough to carry guns.
Ladd Everitt, a spokesperson for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told the Times, “Children who might read these stories do not have the emotional maturity to understand that gun ownership does come with risks.” Everitt also accused Hamilton of trying to “create future [firearm] customers,” with her children’s stories.
Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, referred to the pro-firearm fairy tales as “a disgusting, morally depraved marketing campaign,” according to the Times. He also pointed out that gun-related suicide is the leading cause of death for children over the age of nine, and as many as 50 children and teenagers are shot in the United States every day.
The firearm-infused fairy tales are ultimately propaganda. The whole point of propaganda is using it as a molding apparatus, and that’s exactly what these stories are doing. They’re being used to spread a message to children, the definition of malleable minds.
Characters that are easily recognized by children are now carrying guns, and children will grow up thinking that using guns for intimidation purposes is socially acceptable. Hamilton is using timeless, beloved characters as devices to further acceptance of open gun-toting.
Many of the fairy tales that have survived to this day used to be much darker than how we now tell them. In “Little Red Riding Hood,” a lumberjack cuts open the wolf’s stomach and pulls Grandma out. In “The Little Mermaid,” the protagonist kills herself and is essentially turned into a ghost. There’s a reason why people have changed children’s stories over the years. Society decided children shouldn’t be seeing so much violence and darkness so soon.
Though nobody gets shot in the children’s stories with guns, the main purpose of a firearm is to hurt people. Children don’t need to see other children wielding something so evil at such a young age.
These new fairy tales are mini advertisements for guns. The moral of each story is essentially, “Get a gun. You’ll be glad you did!”
The conversation sparked by these fairy tales is not about gun safety. It’s about children wielding guns. Kids can be taught about guns without glamorizing firearms. Ignorance is worse than exposure. But awareness of guns, not desire for them, should be the key message children take away.
If children are going to be educated about guns, they need to know how dangerous they are. These stories don’t teach them that. Holding the view that the Second Amendment is important is fine until a child accidentally shoots someone else with a gun.
This isn’t to say that children should be sheltered from the reality of guns. Instead of publishing stories in which children hear about other children holding guns, the NRA should educate children on the dangers of them. A child’s initial reaction upon seeing a gun should be to not touch it instead of picking it up.
Guns surround children nowadays. Teenagers can shoot paintball guns or recreationally fire guns at shooting ranges. Arcades are full of shooting games, and Nerf guns have caught on from elementary school kids all the way up to teenagers.
These stories are targeted to such a niche audience that the fairy tales aren’t the only sources of gun-positive information. These stories will be read to children by firearm-loving parents. This isn’t a shocking new epidemic, but an alarming development in Americans’ obsessions with guns.
Movies and video games are rated for a reason. Kids watch “SpongeBob SquarePants,” not “Criminal Minds.” Guns and violence are integrated into American life, but childhood is such a pure place. Firearms don’t belong anywhere near it.
