Project YANO full of crap

Apparently, there’s a group called the Project for Youth and Non-Military Opportunities (YANO) that has a web page protesting Junior ROTC  programs in High Schools specifically because they teach the (safe and proper) use of firearms. 

Project YANO’s view is completely one-sided, anti-firearm, pro-gun control non-sense. If you read their web page, their view of firearms is obvious. 

Project YANO is trying to rally people together to go to a San Diego school board meeting this month to complain that we’re actually teaching young adults how to properly and safely handle and use firearms. I guess YANO would prefer we let our youth not learn how to use firearms.

Note that they refer to guns as ‘weapons’, as opposed to ‘firearms’. Firearms are simply firearms. How they are used, whether as sporting equipment, or as a weapon, is defined by the person using it. A firearm only becomes a weapon if the person operating the firearm is trying to use it to kill and/or injure someone. Even then, there are justified reasons for using a firearm as a defensive weapon. Just because we teach young adults marksmanship skills, we aren’t teaching those kids how to kill. We’re teaching them how to safely and properly operate firearms. 

You know who is really teaching kids how to kill? It’s the parents. Parents who don’t teach and instill discipline and respect in their own children are ‘teaching’ kids how to kill. 

The web page poses the question, “Why are mixed messages being given to youths about guns and violence?” I think the answer to that is obvious. It’s Project YANO and other people who share the same views about firearms. Yes, firearms can be dangerous. So it would make sense to instruct our youth on the safe and proper use of firearms. If you don’t, it’s obvious a youth uneducated in firearms will end up deciding on his or her own how to misuse a firearm. There would be no mixed messages about guns and violence if we actually took the time to properly instruct our youth on firearms.

It’s very aggravating to read the Project YANO page and their attempts to demonize marksmanship training and shooting sports so that we can’t continue pass on these elements and skills to future generations.

There are a lot of high schools, and even some middle schools, in other areas around the country that actually have marksmanship programs, whether it be rifle, pistol, or shotgun. Some of these programs actually foster kids that go on to excel to the collegiate level, or even the Olympics and other International competitions.