An AR-15 baseball raffle by third graders in Missouri will go ahead despite social media criticism following the mass shooting in Florida last Wednesday in which the suspect used a similar weapon to kill 17 and injure more than a dozen.

The coach of the 9-and-under youth baseball team in Neosho, Levi Patterson, told the Kansas City Star that the weapon was offered to the team to raffle off by the father of one of the players who is the co-founder weapons purveyor Black Rain Ordnance Inc.