Two clubs supporting youth football in Staunton and Augusta County are holding fundraising raffles with assault rifles as the top prizes.
Nothing unusual about this at all, right?
I mean, football and guns might be the new baseball and apple pie.
This is ‘Murica.
You’ll have to pry my gun from my cold, dead hands, the rest.
You can, no doubt, detect the dripping sarcasm here.
And I get it, I’m the liberal media, making a big deal about the guns, when all these folks are trying to do is raise money so kids can play football.
I’ll concede that, and the point that there are several moving parts to this story.
Guns and kids, and schools
Yeah, OK, there is the uncomfortable part to these gun raffles, about how youth football involves kids, and how guns are the leading cause of death for children and teens.
We haven’t, fortunately, had to experience here what people in places like Parkland or Sandy Hook or any of a number of other communities that have had to experience in terms of mass shootings at our schools, perhaps by the grace of god, but still.
Though to be sure, we have had our share of school shooting threats of late, which is to say, we’re not entirely immune.
Just last week, two high schools up the road from us in Harrisonburg were closed after threats were made on Snapchat, and the 16-year-old male charged in that case is also believed to be responsible for threats made to “shoot up” Wilson Memorial High School, here in Augusta County.
Not that far away, as the crow flies, we had a near-tragedy at an elementary school in Orange County, where an instructional aide found a loaded gun in the backpack of a 6-year-old.
And a little further up the road from us, up in Page County, an end-of-the-day fire alarm forced a mass evacuation of students, teachers and staff at Luray High School, ahead of a police sweep to determine if there were any potential threats.
That was all in one day, Sept. 16.
Guns in our culture
Another part of the context to our story here: Augusta County is, officially, a Second Amendment sanctuary, after the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to declare it to be such in 2019.
One of the members of the Board of Supervisors characterized the vote as “sending a message that we will not stand by and do nothing,” and punctuated that with the declaration:
“Don’t mess with Augusta County.”
That was a lesson that leaders in Staunton learned the hard way a few months later; after Staunton City Council passed on the opportunity to declare the Queen City a Second Amendment sanctuary, voters elected a new Republican majority for the first time in recent memory.
OK, so, the Republican majority was done and dusted two years later after voters came to their senses.
Even so.
The raffles
The first prize in the ongoing Stuarts Draft Quarterback Club raffle is a Smith & Wesson M&P Shield EZ, one of the guns used in the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville in 2023 in which three students and three adults were killed.
Those aren’t the only guns listed as prizes in the raffles: you could also win a Mossberg 12-gauge shotgun, a Savage Axis II rifle, a Ruger 22LR, a Stevens 334 Walnut .308.
You and your buddies, if you’re lucky, could almost start your own militia, at $5 and $20 a chance.
Credit goes here to the Staunton Quarterback Club, for including on its raffle tickets the disclaimer:
“To be eligible to claim prize, you must be 21 or older and pass a federal background check.”
The only disclaimer on the Stuarts Draft Quarterback Club raffle tickets is:
“Need not be present to win.”
That one needs work.
A parent asks: Does any of this make sense?
“As a mom of a high school student, teacher, and the wife of a teacher, we live in fear of violence in the schools and participate in drills for active shooters. Certainly, the most constructive approach to fundraising for little league football is not to raffle guns on school properties,” a parent, who asked not to be named, wrote to AFP in an email on Thursday.
“This is an issue that affects our community as a whole,” the parent went on. “We need to work to protect children and families in the community. Allowing activities that support guns and violence is not the message that should be sent to families and the community at large for little league football.”
These are all fair points.
I reached out to the two quarterback clubs through their websites and Facebook pages to get the other side of the story.
Not hearing back is why I provided the part of the story about the Board of Supervisors and City Council votes, to illustrate how locals feel about guns, even against the backdrop of the reality that guns are the leading killer of U.S. youths, and the daily danger that kids, teachers and staffers face in our schools due to the prevalence of guns in our society.
Despite all of that, people here love their guns, and they vote in droves for political candidates who tell them that the other side wants to take away their guns, and they dare people to “mess with” them, because they have guns, and so, when they want to raise money for their kids to play football, they raffle off guns, because naturally that’s how you raise money for kids to be able to play football, right?
I do feel it necessary to point out here the different approach taken by another local football group.
The Riverheads Quarterback Club is also raising money through a raffle.
Among its prizes: a Dixie Chopper Zero Turn mower, a Blackstone grill, a family night out at a local movie theater, a $50 grocery gift card.
No guns.
That’s how the people who just had their run of seven straight state football championships do things.
So, there’s that.
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Chris Graham
