‘30 guns in 30 days’ — school’s music-trip fundraiser
A booster group for a Mississippi high school is raising money for a band trip with what a school safety group calls a “highly inappropriate” raffle of guns and ammunition.
The fundraiser — called “30 guns in 30 days” — is holding daily drawings for shotguns, handguns, rifles, ammunition, a bow and even a flamethrower. The US$100 ($157) tickets have sold out and will help send the West Harrison High School band to Orlando, Florida, according to the fundraiser’s Facebook page.
The fundraiser comes after several recent mass shootings across the United States, including the one at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two adults.
“It’s highly inappropriate,” said Tori Bishop, a former Harrison County School District parent.
“In light of the recent school shooting, and the mass shootings we’ve been having going on in this country . . . it is in extremely poor taste. I am disappointed in the district,” she said.
Janean Murphy, one of the raffle organisers, felt there was “nothing” to talk about. “It’s a raffle put together by group of likeminded people to raise money for the band kids to compete in Bands of America,” she said.
Gun raffles are not new to Mississippi and are frequently used as fundraisers for various initiatives across the state. And they are legal.
It comes as Democratic and Republican senators remain at odds over how to keep firearms from dangerous people as bargainers struggled to finalise details of a gun violence compromise in time for their selfimposed deadline of holding votes in Congress next week.
Lawmakers said they remained divided over how to define abusive dating partners who would be legally barred from purchasing firearms.
Disagreements were also unresolved over proposals to send money to states that have “red flag” laws that let authorities temporarily confiscate guns from people deemed dangerous by courts, and to other states for their own violence prevention programmes.
Lawmakers have said a deal must be completed by the end of the week if Congress is to vote by next week.
The measure would impose just small-scale curbs on firearms. It lacks proposals by President Joe Biden and Democrats to prohibit assault-style weapons and high-capacity ammunition magazines like the ones used in Uvalde and a shooting in Buffalo, New York, or to raise the legal age for buying assault rifles from 18 to 21.
Even so, it would be Congress’ most robust move against gun violence since 1993. A ban lawmakers enacted that year on assault weapons took effect in 1994 and expired after a decade.