A kids’ baseball team in Missouri is raising eyebrows for selling raffle tickets for an AR-15, the same weapon that was used in the devastating school shooting in Florida last week.
Coach Levi Patterson told the Kansas City Star that he had planned the AR-15 raffle before the school massacre and that he would not force any kids to sell tickets if they were uncomfortable.
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The father of one of the players, who range in age from 7 to 9, had reportedly offered up the AR-15 for the raffle. The winner of the AR-15 will be required to pass a background check.
Of course, a background check wasn’t enough address the concerns of many people who saw raffling off the AR-15 as dangerous.
The backlash
“Are you all tone deaf?” a Facebook user told Patterson on a post that has since been deleted, according to the New York Daily News. “AR15 kills seventeen so you raffle a gun for child sports? Lord, people wake the hell up. Justify all you want but you are wrong, period.”
In response, Patterson wrote, “We appreciate your ‘concern’ but please understand, we are not, have not, and will not force one of our boys to sell raffle tickets for the Black Rain AR15 Spec 15, if they are uncomfortable doing so.”
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The latest school shooting
Last Wednesday 19-year-old Nikolas Cruz returned to his former school Marjory Stoneman Douglas High.
He went on a deadly rampage, shooting at least 17 people dead, and injuring 23 more. Cruz has now been charged with 17 counts of premeditated murder.
According to both the Associated Press, Cruz was part of a group called the Republic of Florida, which wants to create a white-only state in Florida.
Jordan Jereb, the leader of the group, told the AP that Cruz “acted on his own behalf of what he just did and he’s solely responsible for what he just did.”
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Jereb also said that while Cruz was a part of the group, he did not know him personally.
The group describes itself as a “white civil rights organization fighting for white identitarian politics” and holds paramilitary drills, which Cruz attended in Tallahassee.
All things considered, it would probably have been a better idea to have the baseball team conduct a bake sale or car wash.