Parents openly carry firearms in US pro-gun lobby children's book

Sporting a cover image of a blue-eyed family with guns clipped to their belts, a new American children’s picture book is setting itself out as the solution for all those parents who “carry a gun and sometimes struggle with how to best explain the reasons” to their children.

My Parents Open Carry, by Brian Jeffs and Nathan Nephew, co-founders of the pro-gun Michigan Open Carry, has been released by small US publisher White Feather Press. The picture-book follows a “typical Saturday running errands and having fun together” for Brenna Strong, 13, and her parents, say the authors. “What’s not so typical is that Brenna’s parents lawfully open carry handguns for self-defence.”

Jeffs and Nephew say they were moved to write the book because they “looked for pro-gun children’s books and couldn’t find any”. My Parents Open Carry is, say the authors, “written in the hope of providing a basic overview of the right to keep and bear arms as well as the growing practice of the open carry of a handgun”, because “we fear our children are being raised with a biased view of our constitution and especially in regards to the Second Amendment”.

“Our goal was to provide a wholesome family book that reflects the views of the majority of the American people, i.e. that self-defence is a basic natural right and that firearms provide the most efficient means for that defence,” they write.

The independent news website Raw Story reported that Nephew told Armed American Radio, the official radio programme of The United States Concealed Carry Association, that “most kids aren’t scared of a gun – that’s another good point this book tries to make.”

The title has drawn a host of positive reviews, according to the authors’ website (where they add that “for a limited time only, White Feather Press is giving away a free copy of the fun book Raising Boys Feminists Will Hate! by Doug Giles, with every purchase of My Parents Open Carry in book form. That’s a US$15.99 value!”).