PETA Asks State Governments to End Programs Encouraging Kids to Hunt

PETA Mother’s Op-Ed Blasts Government for Turning Kids Into Killers in the Woods and in the Schools

For Immediate Release:
November 12, 2014

Contact:
Shakira Croce 202-483-7382

It happened again, this time outside Seattle: A teenage hunter who boasted of how he enjoyed killing animals turned his weapons on his classmates and, finally, himself. And today, in an op-ed that just went live on the Tribune News Service, PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman says some of the responsibility for the rash of gun violence in schools is on government agencies’ enthusiastic endorsement of programs that promote youth hunting programs.

“The Marysville-Pilchuck High School shooter was just a few years older than my own son, but unlike my son, who has never touched a gun, he had been encouraged to hunt and given a rifle for his birthday,” Reiman says. “People who pick up guns, aim them at another living being, and fire must deaden a piece of their hearts—or, worse, feel a rush of power that they wish to feel again and again. Can we be surprised then when troubled children pick up hunting weapons and fire at their classmates?”

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to abuse in any way”—is calling on state governments to stop promoting youth hunting programs, especially those that allow a child of any age to shoot and kill animals, noting that nearly all the students involved in mass school shootings in recent years first “practiced” on animals.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.

PETA’s op-ed is available here.