Normally I would recoil at something like this, but I have a hard time blaming the Atwood Little League team for raffling a gun for a fundraiser, because this says more about our gun culture society as a whole than it does the ideals of the team.
A Little League in Atwood, Illinois is holding a raffle to raise money for new equipment. The prize is a military-style AR-15 rifle — the weapon of choice for Adam Lanza in the Sandy Hook Elementary Hook shooting and James Holmes in the Aurora theater shooting last year.
The assault rifle is from Atwood Armory, which partnered with the Atwood-Hammond Little League to help them improve last year’s dismal fundraising record of ten dollars. Since the raffle launched on Tuesday, the armory has apparently been flooded with calls.
No one could be bothered to support the little league players in Atwood until they decided to raffle an AR-15. Now they have plenty of money to purchase new equipment.
I imagine that rifle will be used for an unsavory purpose, whether it serves as a penis-extension or a political symbol, but it’s not the kids’ fault that we won’t support them unless there’s a chance we’ll win a gun while doing so. Cuts to education will only exacerbate the problem as extracurricular activities are phased out so schools can afford to teach the bare minimum of courses required by the state.