July 26, 2018
NSSF Cheers 2018 Scholarship Winners
NEWTOWN, Conn. — The National Shooting Sports Foundation® (NSSF®), the trade association for the firearms industry, is pleased to announce that it has chosen the winners of its 2018 Voting Member Scholarship contest. The annual contest is open to voting company members, their employees and family members, with a total of $60,000 in college costs awards divided among 25 winners. This year’s contest drew entries from more than 75 rising and current college and university students.
Students had a choice of three trending topics on which to provide an essay:
- Should social media platforms censor content concerning the lawful commerce in firearms and ammunition products?
- Should the age to purchase a rifle or shotgun be raised to 21? If so, does the same apply for voting rights and driver’s licenses?
- What are the challenges facing youth today to becoming involved in hunting?
This year’s Grand Prize winner and recipient of $8,000 is Alison Basore, whose father, Richard, works for Hodgdon Powder Company based in Shawnee, Kansas. Ms. Basore chose the topic regarding social media platforms, writing, in part:
“… [W]hen social media platforms censor content, they fail to recognize the content’s validity in the marketplace. This has a raw negative influence … . It is almost as if social media platforms consider the commerce of firearms and ammunition unlawful, and this propagates the wrong idea in the public’s mind. For example, by Facebook refusing to display firearm advertisements, the population gets a biased sampling against the marketplace. For young people today, the idea of gun ownership will be falsely presented as unlawful.
[W]hen social media platforms censor content they open a
