'To me, a rifle's a tool': Pro-gun teens of the Parkland generation want to be heard, too

The young gun enthusiasts play lacrosse, go to science and math camps, skip rope, take ballroom dancing lessons. And they shoot — man, can they shoot.

A group of them gathered at the Monumental Rifle and Pistol Club in Marriottsville, Md., on Saturday, the same day hundreds of thousands of people across the U.S. rallied for gun control.

They came here because they like to shoot. Many fire with frightening speed and eagle-eyed precision. There are junior shooters elsewhere who win championships, drawing online followings.

Others, like 12-year-old Vincent Martucci Bond, are still learning. Kneeling on a mat, he slid a metal pellet into the breach of a Feinwerkbau air rifle, closed the bolt, pulled the hair trigger, and fired.

"Argh!" he grumbled, missing his target. "It broke when I held the shot."

A coach, Rich Suvall, crouched beside him, lengthened the rifle's buttplate and polished the boy's glasses. There was another crack and a satisfying ping as Vincent found his mark.

Bond continued practising with a handful of young shooters, all of whom are proficient with firearms. Just down the hill outside, the repetitive thud of high-powered rounds split the air during a nearby AR-15 clinic.

Many of them have either fired or have expressed interest in shooting AR-15s, the assault-style rifles used at the recent massacre at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla.

They reason that it's just another gun. To them, shooting is just another sport.

"It's just something I like to do," said Vincent's sister, Abigail, 14. "It's like dance. I go to dance class; I go to shooting practice." 

They, too, are the Parkland generation — the cohort of Americans coming of age in the wake of last month's Florida shooting massacre.

Youths from gun-owning families are well aware they are also the voters of tomorrow. For the Maryland group and other junior shooters nationwide, firearms represent discipline, respect, as well as danger — a concern brought into focus by last month's events.

The tragedy sparked the #NeverAgain anti-guns movement. It also prompted youths seeking to become firearms owners to ask themselves: Where do they fit into the gun-reform debate?

"My relationship with firearms started when I was three to five years old…I started sitting on my dad's lap and shooting his 10/22 bolt-action," said Shyanne Roberts, a 13-year-old phenom known for  winning state gun competitions against adults.

"I'd like to see teachers be armed and be trained in a self-defence way," she said in a phone interview from her home in South Carolina.

"I feel really bad for the people who were shot and killed and injured" in Parkland, she went on. "But I don't want stricter gun laws. Gun laws are strict enough."

The eighth-grader said she was the only student in her class last week not to take part in an anti-gun violence walkout at her school.

A junior shooter at the Monumental gun club, Ethan Roby, 14, is familiar with the social anxiety of defending a pastime he and his father view as a family activity. Like Roberts, he's bonded with his father over shooting.

"But some people I know at a home-school co-op I go to are very, very anti-gun," he said. "If I spoke up that I did use [firearms], I feel they would shun me from ever talking about it again if they even knew I had a shotgun in my life, and what I do here."

Watching nearby, Jennifer Martucci Bond, Vincent's mother, marvelled at her youngest son's progress at target practice. He has attention deficit disorder, she said, but at shooting clinics, he learned to concentrate, slow his breathing, and focus on one task in steady silence. 

"Watch him. The amount of focus. When we first got here, he'd have to get up and run around the building a couple times in between each relay," his mother said.

Few of Dakota Hanchett's high school classmates in Hanover, N.H., understand why he skipped the walkout against gun violence last week. As a 17-year-old gun owner who grew up hunting and learning firearms safety, he didn't make a big deal about declining to participate, although he felt torn about his quiet act of counter-protest.

Many of the 17 people killed at Parkland were near his age. He wanted to honour them, but he felt the national walkouts were condemning a gun culture that's meaningful to him.

"Around the time I was five, around kindergarten, my dad was teaching me firearms safety," Hanchett said in a phone interview.

He was permitted to hold his father's guns when he was around eight years old, with supervision. By age 10, he was taking hunter safety classes through the Fish and Game Department.

Hanchett internalized lessons about muzzle control and the principles of "action open, safety on" when handling weapons while not in use. He was taught to understand and respect their deadly power, but to never get too comfortable.

"To me, a rifle's a tool," he said. "A dangerous tool."

Hanchett thinks his hobby scares fellow students. So in an op-ed published last week in The New York Times, he tried to articulate his love for guns. 

"I think the people who are afraid of guns should talk to the people who are familiar with them, and both should keep an open mind," he wrote. 

Hanchett's family comes from a farming background. He learned how to butcher rabbits, cattle, pigs and chickens humanely. He believes in some gun reforms, such as tougher screening for would-be gun purchasers, and a ban on gun-modifying "bump stocks." But he stops short of calling for restricting types of firearms, including the AR-15.

"Would I like to have an assault rifle? Sure. Is there need for it where I am? Not really," he said.

His New York Times column has logged more than 2,200 comments, including one from the self-identified grandparent of a Parkland victim who is urging legislators to pass "sensible gun legislation." Hanchett is aware of the comment and contemplating whether to reach out to the writer.

Recently, a football teammate supporting stricter gun control grilled Hanchett on the subject, he said. He was eager to explain his rationale.

"If he's willing to listen, I'm willing to teach."

Even so, he understands why there's so much anxiety among other teens about firearms. The same day Hanchett spoke with CBC News, his school was put into an emergency lockdown. Someone had threatened a shooting.