Firing Range Offers Santa Pics – with Guns

Photo by Sandy Springs Gun Club and Range/Facebook

"What better way to express your holiday spirit, passion for firearms and help support our community than a picture with Santa at the Sandy Springs Gun Club and Range?” asks an ad for the Sandy Springs, Georgia, firing range. It’s promoting the club’s Saturday fundraiser, which will offer families the chance to have their photos snapped with Santa — while holding their choice of an AK-47, AR-15, or FN SCAR 1 as provided by the facility.

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All ages are invited to attend the free, non-shooting event, where organizers will accept food donations for the Sandy Springs Community Assistance Center while handing out free photo magnets of their snap with Santa and weapon. 

“If [children are] not comfortable with a firearm in the picture they definitely don’t have to [pose with one],” the range’s co-owner, Robyn Marzullo, told the New York Daily News. (A Facebook update notes that kids under 12 aren’t permitted past the lobby, and that folks must be 18 years or older to handle the weapons, “inspected, unloaded and deactivated” for safety). “Any time you think outside the box, there could be people who have different opinions, but I’d say that the overall feedback has been really, really positive and we’re just really excited.”

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Gun-control activists? Not so much. Atlanta’s WSB TV reports that their coverage of the event elicited hundreds of comments condemning it. (The National Rifle Association of America, meanwhile, did not respond to a request for comment from Yahoo Parenting.)

“This is a holiday with distinct religious overtones, and the notion of glorifying weapons designed to take human life, in this context, is disturbing,” Ladd Everitt, communications director for the national Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, tells Yahoo Parenting. “This sends kids a troubling message. It tells them that firearms are as wholesome as any of the other hallowed Christmas traditions.”

Holidays have always been looked at as a time when we celebrate peace, Everitt notes. “Bringing weapons into it signals the very opposite to children, and it’s reasonable to be concerned about that. I mean, Jesus was a figure who felt so strongly about nonviolence that he gave his life instead of raising a hand against his aggressors. Has that been lost on us?”