Sale of a gun for children in the United States: “Absolutely sickening”, condemn American senators

by time news

Democratic US senators on Thursday strongly denounced the business practices of an American manufacturer of small, light and lethal weapons. The company WEE1 Tactical indeed sells a semi-automatic rifle designed especially for children: the JR-15.

The Junior-15, modeled after an assault rifle used in several deadly shootings, is “absolutely sickening”, condemned the leader of the Democrats in the Senate, Chuck Schumer. “The last thing we should be doing is downsizing these weapons of war and marketing them to children,” he said, urging the US Consumer Protection Agency (FTC) to open up an investigation of its manufacturer.

The rifle, which weighs barely 1 kg for a size of only 80 cm, fires live ammunition well. Supplied with magazines of one, five or ten 22 caliber long rifle cartridges, it was first marketed in January 2022 at a price of 389 dollars, approximately 360 euros.

A “piece of American freedom”

WEE1 Tactical describes it as “a piece of American freedom” aimed “for small-scale enthusiasts”. On its website, the company depicts a blonde girl looking through the sights of one of these rifles in the snow.

Asked by Agence France presse (AFP), the company defended the marketing of its weapon, which according to it has “a safety mechanism” present on no other rifle.

“Faced with the epidemic of armed violence among young people and shootings”, a weapon like this “simply should not exist” hammered Chuck Schumer. He took as an example the case of a 6-year-old child who shot and wounded his teacher earlier this month in a school in Virginia.

Shootings are a recurring scourge in the United States where the right to own weapons is guaranteed by the Constitution. On Thursday, President Joe Biden again urged lawmakers to ban assault rifles as a matter of urgency. But attempts to regulate their sale are often blocked in the US Congress, the parliament, where gun lobbies wield strong influence.

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