The Student Air Rifle Program – SAR turns 5 this month.
We in the firearms community know that traditional marksmanship and safety programs have been harried from schools and organizations with torches and pitch forks by the anti-gunner factions who cannot foresee (despite all evidence to the contrary) allowing young people in this country to understand firearms as anything positive. They cannot imagine that during the student’s developmental years marksmanship training would result in anything other than that student tragically exploding into wanton accidentally on purpose violence immediately upon even making a finger gun (or gun shaped pop-tart)
It’s an absurd notion, granted, but we also still don’t teach basic personal finance, or skilled learning and problem solving very well either.. so… yeah.
The SAR program has sought, and successfully implemented, an agreeable middle ground alternative. One that the reasonable and reasoning folks who would be wary of live firearms can support much more readily.
Air Guns.
Umarex, a Walther brand, is an air gun titan and has been instrumental in the helping the current 11,000 students the program has been able to reach and teach.
In partnership with them, and celebration of 5 years of the program, they are giving away an Embark. Drawing on the 31st.
The Embark target air rifle is everything the fundamentals of marksmanship require. It’s a lightweight rifled .177 pellet gun platform with target sights and a fixed velocity average of 510 fps. It is a superb learning tool to develop safety and marksmanship fundamentals. They can be flexibly set up indoor or outdoor use. They require far less safety equipment, are less resource intensive to maintain and operate, and don’t use the high pressure propellants that make wary adults vote against teaching kids crucial fundamentals out of their own fear.
Firearms are dangerous. We understand this as one risk among many we live with every day. They aren’t going away but they are easy to safely understand.
Introducing the disciplines involved with firearms to children in an approachable and respectful way means more kids learn and grow into disciplined and responsible adults. Adults (and students) who have a deeper and fuller understanding, that may have been otherwise denied them, about the 400-600 million guns around them in their day-to-day lives. Adults who recognize, respect, and cherish the discipline of marksmanship and can continue to cultivate it in their lives.
