Guns are a polarizing topic. In parts of America, there is hypersensitivity when children are depicted in photographs shooting guns. Even when done safely and legally.
Ken Bone, the red sweater-clad Illinois man who came to national prominence when he asked a question at the second presidential debate in 2016, tweeted in April that his son was suspended from school after firing a semi-automatic rifle while under Bone’s supervision.
Bone tweeted the photo of his son shooting at a gun range to Parkland survivor Kyle Kashuv, a supporter of gun rights who claimed police interrogated him after a similar photo on Twitter showed him at a gun range.
In New Jersey, two students faced five days of in-school suspension in March from Lacey Township High School for posting a photo of them at a private gun range.
While there is understandable concern about gun safety and responsible use of firearms, nearly 12,000 Minnesota high school students are shooting at gun ranges every week this spring with no repercussions or backlash. These boys and girls compete in the Minnesota State High School Clay Target League.
There has not been an incident or an injury since the league’s meager beginnings with three teams and 30 students in 2008, making trapshooting one of the safest sports available to Minnesota high school students.
“Since 2008, we’ve pulled the trigger more than 30 million times and put 42,000 through the program and never an injury,” said John Nelson, vice president of the Minnesota clay target league as well as the USA High School Clay Target League. “Some people are getting worked up about guns. The gun isn’t violent. It’s who is holding the firearm.”
That is a pro-gun argument that doesn’t sit well with many who oppose firearms. Agree or disagree, but Nelson is right when it comes to Minnesota high school students involved in trapshooting.
“None of our kids have ever done any of these heinous acts. Rarely are these acts done with a shotgun,” Nelson said. “When somebody tries to make a correlation with the league, I ask how they make the correlation, I quickly make the point it is so far-fetched. Throughout all these tragedies, I haven’t received a single message or email (complaining about trapshooting).
“Regardless of one’s view in gun control or how they view shooting sports, imagine bringing before a school board a sport with violent collisions, injuries, concussions, even deaths. That’s football. They wouldn’t allow it nowadays. No way it would happen.”
The Minnesota State High School Clay Target League has grown from those three schools and fewer than three dozen students 10 years ago to about 11,900 participants representing more than 450 high schools, Nelson said, adding trapshooting has spread to 20 states and 804-school approved teams.
That approval comes from school districts open to trapshooting because of its history of firearms use in a safe and educational environment.
“I haven’t heard it being a troubling issue. I haven’t heard that from superintendents,” said Gary Amoroso, former superintendent of the Lakeville school district who serves as executive director of the Minnesota Association of School Administrators. “We support the concept of local decision-making by a school board and a community and truly, in my seven years (as MASA executive director), this is not an issue that has surfaced once. It’s not an issue of conversation or concern. If a community and school board are comfortable with that activity and know kids are properly supervised and know there is good instruction, it actually can be beneficial in the long run for those students.”
The closest thing to a controversy related to trapshooting in Minnesota happened last year in Big Lake, where a yearbook photo of high school team members holding their shotguns caused a brief stir because it violated district policy forbidding firearms in school photos. The initial decision to ban the photo was quickly overturned by the school district, which changed the policy to allow an exception for trapshooting.
“We started trapshooting four or five years ago. We have had no incidents,” said Deb Henton, superintendent at North Branch High School as well as president-elect of Amoroso’s MASA and the state’s 2018 superintendent of the year. “I am delighted we started it. The response has been good. We have no regrets.”
The Minnesota high school league holds it state championships every year over nine days in Alexandria. Calling it a big event would be understating it.
“Minnesota holds the largest shooting sport event in the world. Last year, almost 7,500 kids were taking part,” Nelson said. “The only complaint we had was some kids wore flip-flops, and you can’t shoot in flip-flops. Over 800,000 targets were shot over nine days.”
Without an injury. Without an incident.
Bob Sansevere can be heard Mondays and Fridays on the KQRS Morning Show, and he does a daily podcast called “The BS Show,” which can be downloaded via iTunes, Stitcher, playerfm and thebsshow.net