Gun debate comes to children's books

The book 'My Parents Open Carry' is by the co-founders of the pro-gun organization Michigan Open Carry, Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew, who said they 'looked for pro-gun children's books and couldn't find any.'

'My Parents Open Carry' is by Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew.

A new book is bringing the gun debate to a whole new level: your child’s bookshelf. 

“My Parents Open Carry,” by Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew, co-founders of the pro-gun Michigan Open Carry, follows 13-year-old Brenna Strong and her family on a “typical Saturday running errands and having fun together,” the book’s blurb reads. “What’s not so typical is that Brenna’s parents lawfully open carry handguns for self-defense.”

That’s right, a children’s picture book starring … handguns.

The books' authors said they “looked for pro-gun children’s books and couldn’t find any,” so they decided to write their own.

"Our goal was to provide a wholesome family book that reflects the views of the majority of the American people, i.e., that self-defense is a basic natural right and that firearms provide the most efficient means for that defense," they write

The book’s publisher, White Feather Press, calls “My Parents Open Carry” a solution for all the moms and dads out there who “carry a gun and sometimes struggle with how to best explain the reasons” to their children, as the Guardian reported.

The book’s cover features blue-eyed Brenna posing with her parents, each with handguns clipped to their belts.

The story begins as parents Dick and Bea “retrieve their handguns from the locked gun safe and check them to make sure they are loaded. They place the handguns in their holster … in plain sight on their hips.” 

As they go about their day, they run into folks like neighbor Mr. Wright, who praises their decision to “open carry.”

“I see you are both packin’ as usual, good for you,” he says, cheerily. “You just never know when you might need to protect yourself and loved ones…. It’s best to be prepared I always say.”

The book, not surprisingly, has drawn heated feedback – positive and negative. 

“I love it…. boy does this fill a vacuum,” writes Alan Korwin of gunlaws.com on the authors’ website.

“Outstanding, outstanding … every person should buy five copies of this book” writes James Towle, host of American Trigger Sports Network.

And from John Roshek, founder of the Citizens League for Self-Defense: “Loved it, I ordered a copy for our school’s library.”

Others, however, reacted with horror. 

Children’s publisher Elizabeth Laws tweeted,

On Amazon, many users left tongue-in-cheek comments like this one. “This started out as a 5 Star rating, but quickly went downhill as the evening progressed," wrote one reviewer. "After saying our prayers to Jesus and Charlton Heston, I sat on the edge of my kids' bed to read them this book, when I shifted my position and accidentally set off my 9mil that was strapped to my hip, shooting myself in the thigh.” 

Others poked fun at the book’s cover (“The cover was designed by someone who we assume gets off on frightening children with his or her creepy, dead-eye drawings of humans,” writes E! Online), the book’s grammatical mistakes, even the protagonist’s clothing (“"Would love to deconstruct everything wrong with this. #1, Open Carry isn't a verb," Laws tweeted. "Bad enough that her parents pack heat, but who made a teen wear a granny blouse? Or tease her hair?”).

On a more serious note, many observers took the opportunity to point out that gun accidents wound or kill tens of thousands of children each year. According to a study in the journal Pediatrics, nearly 10,000 children in the US are injured or killed by firearms every year.”

Raw Story called “My Parents Open Carry” "a primer for the children of gun nuts who'll be lucky to see their 10th birthday.”

Readers who order “My Parents Open Carry” from the authors’ website will, for a limited time, also get a free copy of Doug Giles’ “Raising Boys Feminists Will Hate!” 

We’re not kidding.

Parents, if you have a young son and you want him to grow up to be a man, then you need to keep him away from pop culture, public school and a lot of Nancy Boy churches," the description of the book reads. "If metrosexual pop culture, feminized public schools and the effeminate branches of evanjellycalism lay their sissy hands on him, you can kiss his masculinity good-bye because they will morph him into a dandy. Yeah, mom and dad, if – if – you dare to raise your boy as a classic boy in this castrated epoch, then you've got a task that's more difficult than getting a drunk to hit the urinal at Chili's.”

You can add “My Parents Open Carry,” and “Raising Boys Feminists Will Hate,” right next to “A Rule is to Break: A Child’s Guide to Anarchy," “Maggie Goes on a Diet,” and “We Shall Never Forget 9/11: The Kids’ Book of Freedom” coloring book.

Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Gun debate comes to children's books
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2014/0805/Gun-debate-comes-to-children-s-books
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe