NRA fairy tales give guns to Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel

Once upon a time Hansel and Gretel had guns.

And they had been trained to use those guns safely, so the story goes from the NRA.

Before long, they heard a rustling in the leaves, and slowly turned to see a magnificent 10-point buck drinking from a stream. Gretel readied her rifle and fired.

Her training had paid off, for she was able to bring the buck down instantly with a single shot. She and Hansel quickly field-dressed the deer and packed up to head back home, hardly believing their luck.

That reworked fairy tale, recently posted on the NRA Family website, has gun safety advocates up in arms.

“The NRA continues to stoop to new lows in the hopes of shoving guns into America’s youngest hands,” Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, told ABC News.

“It must now advertise deadly weapons to kids by perverting childhood classics with no regard whatsoever for the real life carnage happening every day. To be frank, it’s pathetic.”

Since January the NRA Family website has published two reworked children’s tales — “Little Red Riding Hood (Has A Gun)” and “Hansel and Gretel (Have Guns).”

A third tale, “The Three Little Pigs (Have Guns),” is due in May.

(No word yet on whether the firearms will be specially adapted to accommodate cloven hooves.)

Both were written by children’s author Amelia Hamilton, a conservative author and blogger.

“The great purpose of these old fables was to teach kids not to talk to strangers (and certainly not to take candy from them),” wrote Raw Story. “But these revised tales offer a different solution: Arm the kids!”

An editor’s note on the website explains the purpose of the new tales.

“Most of us probably grew up having fairy tales read to us as we drifted off to sleep,” it reads. “Did any of them ever make your rest a little bit uneasy?

“Have you ever wondered what those same fairy tales might sound like if the hapless Red Riding Hoods, Hansels and Gretels had been taught about gun safety and how to use firearms?”

The NRA offers programs for children that promote responsible gun use and safety. The group’s Eddie Eagle safety mascot teaches pre-K through fourth-graders what to do if they find a gun.

“It’s not just guns but just general safety,” Hamilton said on the NRA News radio show Cam & Co. “They are avoiding all of these horrific situations that happen in fairy tales that are really very violent in the traditional tellings. If kids are taught safety in general, all of this could be avoided.”

And so, in Hamilton’s version of “Little Red Riding Hood”:

“Red was given her very own rifle and lessons on how to use it — just in case — to be sure that she would always be safe. So, with a kiss from her mother, rifle over her shoulder and a basket for her Grandmother in her hands, Red took a deep breath and entered the woods.”

Later, the wolf is stunned to see Granny packing, too.

“The wolf couldn’t believe his luck — he had come across two capable ladies in the same day, and they were related! Oh, how he hated when families learned how to protect themselves.”

Hamilton told CBS that the stories are “also for adults. It’s all about safety and it’s for parents to start those conversations.”

Not surprisingly, the stories have inspired a number of riffs on the Internet.

There’s this one: When Jack and Jill went up that hill to fetch a pail of water Jack fell down …. and accidentally shot and killed Jill with his pistol.

And this:

Also not surprisingly, gun control groups are appalled. “This to them is about selling guns ultimately,” Ladd Everitt, communications director for the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, told CBS.

“And if they can reach out to young children and develop customers for the future, they are content to do that.”

When the “Little Red Riding Hood” story came out in January, the Coalition wrote on its Facebook page that the story was part a “degenerate culture that corrupts children and encourages them to take on significant, and unnecessary, risks.”

Alan Lizotte, a professor of criminal justice at the State University of New York at Albany who studies gun policy, said the fairy tales are all about public relations for the NRA.

“If you talk about cartoon characters with guns who are you talking about? Moms and dads with little kids,” he told NBC News. “They have to win thse young families over or they won’t go into the next generation. This is the kinder and gentler and NRA.”

This story was originally published March 28, 2016 at 3:30 PM with the headline "NRA fairy tales give guns to Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretel."