Your bedtimes stories, with guns

Looking back, the Brothers Grimm were well worth their namesake—the big bad wolf, Rumpelstiltskin and the rest of their characters are more than a little creepy, they’re truly grim. The moral motive wrapped in most of those stories takes form in plotlines and characters that are, in a modern context, pretty dark.

Those tales have been repurposed over the years in a variety of ways, and as Disney would have it, they’ve often been made more savory. Less blood and less death seems in tune with the times, and mothers across the country are probably content with those interpretations. Yet, as hard as I try, shoving a 12-guage into the hands of Little Red Riding Hood doesn’t strike me as a more secure reimagining.

That revision is brought to you by the National Rifle Association, which just this past January launched a pair of reinvented fairy tales on its NRA Family website. Those stories—Little Red Riding Hood (Has a Gun) and Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns), respectively—now illustrate a world in which human-devouring wolves and child-eating witches are held in check by shotguns. Dice that up any way you want, but these new synopses teeter less towards fantasy and more towards lunacy.

I don’t want this to sound like a diatribe against the Second Amendment because, truthfully, it is not. I am concerned far more with the moral implications of stuffing lethal weapons into the hands of a preteen—even if it is in the name of self-defense. That byproduct, that the characters are able to protect themselves and “defuse” the perilous situations they encounter, is what the NRA and partner author Amelia Hamilton are arguing these revisions present.

There is an instructive quality to children’s literature. The ideas of learning right from wrong, not talking to strangers and not wandering too far from home serve as education embedded in entertainment. Yet, those thinly veiled allegories also ask that children develop their own sense of moral reasoning and critical thinking. Sure, Little Red Riding Hood teaches us that listening to mom is always a good call, but without the Big Bad Wolf, a five-year-old wouldn’t be shepherded towards that decision. Telling a child that the best way to get rid of a stranger is to point a loaded gun at them is morally dubious at best and dangerously misleading at worst. The ability to own a gun does not make it a panacea for your daily dissatisfactions, and I have a hard time believing that they belong in a children’s story.

These rewrites, well intentioned as they pretend to be, are an overt attempt to introduce and normalize guns to the youngest and most influential members of our society. No matter which way you spin it, guns are weaponry, and pointing a barrel at someone’s face has very real and substantial ramifications. In Hamilton’s rewrite, the Big Bad Wolf is only scared stiff when he “heard the unmistakable sound of a shotgun’s safety being clicked off.” As far as interpretation goes, this story presents a series of conflicts that are better remedied by bullets than anything else. Blurring the line between gun safety and gun promotion at such a young age is a disingenuous. It promotes guns as a problem-solver under the guise of education and imagination.

In all honesty, the likelihood of these NRA bedtime stories hitting the mainstream—or gaining any traction for that matter—are slim. Even if the intention is really, “all about safety and it’s for parents to start those conversations,” as Hamilton states, few families I know seem intent on weaving the intricacies of shotgun safeties into their children’s bedtime routines. There is a time and place gun safety and education, but that should target the people who are of age to actually wield guns. For whatever reason, kindergarteners don’t seem like the intended audience.

The easy answer might simply be, “don’t go to the NRA for your children’s entertainment,” but it feels like there might be a little more to it than that. These rewritings are solicitations to young children and their families, asking them not only to learn about the safety of guns, but the ethical circumstances for their use. That’s not something that feels appropriate for young children, particularly when administered by the NRA. Spreading gun safety and awareness are important tasks, and I agree wholeheartedly that the NRA should play in active role in that process. However, it’s not a task that should be left to Hansel and Gretel—otherwise the Brothers Grimm might have given them crossbows to begin with.