By Selwyn Duke

While in a town I know well in rural upstate New York years ago, I saw a father and son emerge from its gun store. The boy, aged about 10, was carrying a neat looking Ruger Mini-14 rifle his dad had just purchased (“open carry” is legal in the county). I smiled and thought to myself, “What a slice of Americana.” It was like Norman Rockwell meets the NRA.

It’s also true that the reaction 150 miles south in New York City to a boy openly carrying a gun would have been far different: Panic and police presence. Of course, there’s high crime in the Big Apple — but little in the upstate county. And it’s all emblematic of what’s evident here: two Americas.

This divide is also apparent in the reaction to a new addition to the firearms market: an “AR-15 for kids” called the JR-15.

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