In the article, "Be Sure You're Right, Then Go Ahead: The Davy Crockett Gun Craze" by Sarah Nilsen, the author tries to proves that the National Rifle Association sparked a gun craze by capitalizing on the use of social media. The NRA accomplished this by riding the coat tails of the popularity of the television show "Davy Crockett: King of the Wild Frontier", which first aired in 1955 and was produced by the Walt Disney Corporation. The show helped promote the acceptance of gun play by children. Nilsen states that some people thought this coincided with the rise of juvenile delinquency. The purpose of the article was to show the impact that social media had on the popularization of guns through its social acceptance of childhood gun-play.
             Personally, I found "Be Sure You're Right, Then Go Ahead..." confusing and contradictory in nature. Nilsen starts out by making the argument that the increase in popularity of toy guns and gun play by children was fueled by the Davey Crockett TV series. In turn, public opinion was swayed to believe that the increase in childhood gun play would lead to an increase in incidences of juvenile delinquency. Well before the author penned this article, children have engaged in the fantasy of playing Cowboys and Indians. In harder economic times when families did not have the discretionary income that they had after World War II, children solicited the use of sticks in place of plastic toy guns which became so popular in the 1950's. Linking childhood delinquency with toy guns is a stretch. As stated in the article, "The War on Toy Guns: Boys, Girls, and the Games They Play", by Jonathan Turley, "Toy guns are no more the cause of violence than toy kitchen sets are the cause of obesity."(Turley, 2011)
             The next point Sarah Nilsen makes is that the childhood delinquency can be blamed on the increase of broken families and the absences of mothers in the home. I feel may be a valid point. With soldiers ret...