About a week ago, a company in Utah that makes custom modifications to firearms debuted what it described as a fun new product: a kit that encases Glock handguns in red, yellow, and blue Lego blocks, refashioning lethal weapons to look exactly like children’s toys.
“We have been building guns out of blocks for the last 30 years and wanted to flip the script to aggravate Mom,” Provo-based Culper Precision explained on its website. It went on to argue that personal defense is a right granted by God and that gun ownership is protected by the Constitution before getting to the most important reason the company was selling “BLOCK19,” as the design was named, for $549 to $765, depending on the specifics.
“There is a satisfaction that can ONLY be found in the shooting sports and this is just one small way to break the rhetoric from Anti-Gun folks and draw attention to the fact that the shooting sports are SUPER FUN!” the site proclaimed, exuding a bravado that would prove to be short-lived. “Here’s the thing. Guns are fun. Shooting is fun. 30 rounds full auto is fun.” He said he was going to watch cartoons. Instead, he opened his dad’s gun safe.
What’s not fun, and went unaddressed on the sales page, is the reality that thousands of children unintentionally shoot themselves or others each year because they find a gun and pull its trigger. Culper Precision’s customization arrived at a time when that problem is only getting worse and firearm sales are soaring. As word of the new product spread on the Internet late last week, the idea struck many people as so profoundly misguided that it would inevitably cost children their lives. READ MORE
