The Blue Trail range fundraiser, to help raise money for their mounting legal bills, was a great success. One of the gun bloggers managed to attend:
One thing of note that concerned me. (And I apologize if this offends anyone.) But I was rather distraught by the general age of the attendees. Many being what I’d label as either elderly or Vietnam vet age. I do not say this as insult, I greatly respect both groups. But the twenty and thirty year olds were in very low quantity in comparison. This put a chill down my spine…
I’ve seen many churches with similar demographics, and many churches that are now condominiums because once those demographic groups pass; the church no longer has enough members to sustain it.
There are plenty of young shooters out there. Go to any gun show, you’ll see a mix of the young and the old. Go to any club or community event, and you’ll see only old people. Young people are not involved in the issue politically. There are a few reasons for this:
- Young people are eschewing civic organizations as a whole.
- Young people have less time to devote to civic engagement.
- Young people seem to be less interested in competitive shooting.
- A lot of these guys don’t know defeat. I was nineteen when the Brady Act passed. I was twenty when the assault weapons ban passed. A lot of these guys in their twenties don’t realize that gun control will come for them. I see the guns these guys check out at the shows. They really don’t know they are a target and can lose their rights.
He’s observed something here that I do think is a real problem. If we don’t create a new generation of gun leaders, when the existing generation gets too old or dies off, were screwed. People have to get involved if we want to keep this right. There really is no other alternative.
Sebastian, this is a good point to be making. It seems the same at my club, and if those of us in our 20’s/30’s/40’s don’t step up, we’ll be stuck without private places to shoot… I think this is a good topic for discussion going forward after the election.
A lot of the clubs that used to be out in the middle of nowhere now have suburbia approaching them, and less tolerance of the noise.
Yes. Depending on the result, we might need to drive forward and grow the NRA like nothing you can imagine. I can’t even begin to describe how utterly screwed we’re going to be if Obama wins and we can’t at least turn around Congress in two years.
Like I mentioned, the NJCDL meeting was 2/3’rds young people under 30. Don’t know where the hell they hang out, cause I don’t see them in my shooting circles. But they all were quite interested in maintaining their rights, and even expanding them.
I don’t think people get too active until later in life, and then, it can be too late.
There are a few private shooting clubs in southeast virginia. One appears to have a good spread in ages, due in large part that they hold weekly scoot-and-shoot competitions (not sure whether they are IDPA or IPSC). The others appear to have the same age range mentioned here. It seems like a large issue is that they either don’t recognize that they actually need to reach out to the younger people to let them know these places exist. Many of them don’t advertise their existence much, and members don’t seem to work terribly hard to bring in younger shooters with whom they work.
As a result, the younger generation continues to go to the corporate ranges (for lack of a better way to describe the non-club ones).
Don’t forget about all those crazy college kids (I used to be one of them, until I graduated) over at concealedcampus.org. There’s a lot of passion out there, but yes, not enough involvement in the traditional political process.
So, while I understand your concern I also think that as people get older they will become more involved again. I’m in several organizations where the average age of the membership is getting to be closer to my current age. This isn’t because younger people are joining, this is because I am getting older. *grins*
People in their 20s, 30s and early 40s are generally spending their time getting established in their careers and raising their families.