Missouri kids baseball team selling raffle tickets for an AR-15

Children in Missouri are selling raffle tickets for an AR-15 — the same weapon used by a Florida gunman who killed 17 people at a high school — to raise money for their baseball team.

The Neosho-based team consists of players who range in age from 7 to 9, and the fund-raiser was planned before the Parkland school massacre Wednesday, team coach Levi Patterson told the Kansas City Star.

The kids weren’t forced to sell the tickets. He said he’s heartbroken over the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, but acknowledged gun raffles have been happening for years.

Critics bashed the raffle on Facebook.

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“Are you all tone deaf?” a user wrote to Patterson in a deleted post. “AR15 kills seventeen so you raffle a gun for child sports? Lord, people wake the hell up. Justify all you want but you are wrong, period.”

Patterson responded: “We appreciate your ‘concern’ but please understand, we are not, have not, and will not force one of our boys to sell raffle tickets for the Black Rain AR15 Spec 15, if they are uncomfortable doing so.”

The father of one of the players offered an AR-15 for the raffle. The winner has to pass a background check to get the gun.