Courtesy of Bristol Palin's now back up and running blog:

Like everyone else, I’ve made plenty of mistakes in life  (Well no argument there.)– mine probably a little more public than most. One thing I am confident about, however, is my parenting ability. 

Recently, headlines have questioned my and my husband’s parenting acumen (Yeah, clearly a ghostwriter.), stemming from pictures posted of our kids in the proximity of guns. 

Do people forget what the Second Amendment is? We have a Constitutional right to bear arms! We also have a responsibility to protect our families. (From?)

Why are gun owners continually shamed – and proponents of the second amendment made to feel guilty – just because of controversy swirling around wackos who used guns in their evil attacks? (No that is not the reason. The reason is because 110 children die each year in what are termed "accidental shootings.") Do we shame car owners after tragic car accidents? Or demand all knife owners be punished with diminished rights after a knife is blamed for injury? Do we blame spoons for destroying lives by making us fat? (That is the same ignorant argument made by the NRA. The main purpose of cars is transportation, knives are for cutting things, and spoons are for eating, If ANY of those were designed and manufactured for the sole purpose of killing then that would be a viable comparison.)

I’m not ashamed to be a gun owner, and definitely not ashamed to teach my kids about gun safety at a young age. 

Firearms are a big part of my family’s life.  (Yeah Track could not have threatened his girlfriend without them.) We’re armed for protection. My husband was a Marine sniper. We hunt; we live off the land in Alaska -keeping our freezers full with meat we’ve hunted and harvested. I grew up hunting and fishing – just like my husband did – and just like we’ll raise our kids to do. 

I usually ignore tabloids stories, they really don’t bother me. But I won’t let the latest headlines go unanswered: I can tell you, I’m proud to be a gun owner; I love our Constitution; I’m proud to teach my kids gun safety; and I know I’m parenting right when it comes to family, work ethic, values, and what’s really important in life. And I promise you, my kids are safer, and more protected and nurtured, in our own home than they could ever be anywhere else. 

So clearly this was written by somebody other than Bristol, but as of right now I have no idea if Nancy French is back in the mix or if this is somebody completely new.

By the way from what I have been told Bristol did not do much hunting as a young girl. Much like her mother she was not terribly interested in those activities.

And as for gun safety, that is something that Levi has been teaching Tripp, not Dakota or Bristol.

Simply put the criticism that Dakota received was NOT about being a gun owner, it was about having his guns in close proximity to a child.

Every single day we seem to hear about yet another child losing their life due to a grownup not being careful with a firearm. The people who made remarks simply did not want to see Sailor Grace or Tripp lose their life for such an easily preventable reason.

A truly loving and caring parent would take that criticism to heart.