Boys gravitate toward guns naturally. It doesn’t have to be taught or encouraged. My son started using everything as a gun from a very early age. One of my favorite anecdotes:
He was about 5 and we were in a grocery store and he saw all the pretty flowers in the floral department. “Can we get some pretty flowers for Mommy? Please?” I acquiesced, thinking it was very sweet of him. As soon as I handed him a bunch of purple tulips, he turned the stalks around and held them like a gun, saying “Bang! Bang!” for the rest of the shopping.
I’m okay with it. Like a lot of other things, he knows the difference between saying “Bang!” and reality. (But of course, I’ve taught him gun safety and I’m ultra-careful about preventing his access to real weapons.)
My mom started off with a “no toy guns” rule, but quickly realized the impracticality of that, given the abundance of sticks. So she relaxed it to “no toy guns that look like real guns”. Brightly colored plastic things were OK.
I never asked, but I imagine she would have been OK with an actual real gun, so long as I made it clear that I understood all the safety rules.
Ain’t just. You’d be hard-pressed to find a more hardcore conservative than my sainted, Catholic-church organ-playing mother, and she wouldn’t let my brother or I play with guns when we were kids.
Not that I disagree strongly, but I’d rather thought that siblings of about the same age would help with this quite a bit more (I’m essentially an only child, with much older siblings).
This info should be on Public Service Announcements on TV, radio, and billboards.
We were big into play “war” (toy / water guns) and “ninja” (plastic swords / sticks) growing up. It was the early 80s. We thought there was a very real possibility that some day we would need those skills for fighting the Soviets…or evil ninjas.
I don’t have a problem with my kids playing with toy guns. The only rule I have is that they can’t shoot actual projectiles at other people (which is apparently not the rule in many households, as most kids who pick up my son’s Nerf machine gun immediately shoot the nearest kid and have to be told that we don’t do that in our house). If the kids want to run around shooting each other with their fingers, or sticks, or anything else, that’s fine by me. They know the difference between play and reality.
However, I may not be a good example to follow, as I made the kids padded escrima sticks (a martial arts weapon) and let then wail away on each other with them.
Growing up in the 60’s, I played cowgirl all the time, and thie most definitely involved toy guns! I’ve gone out target shooting with a friend once in my adult life and really enjoyed it, tho I don’t own a gun nor do I pan on getting one.
I don’t know what I would have done all day without squirt guns and nerf darts. The idea of my son playing with them does not upset me in the least.
Seems to me, thiswouldn’t have happened if toy guns weren’t around.
North Miami Beach police have launched an investigation after an officer shot and killed a man who was prowling through a neighborhood carrying a toy gun.
The incident began at around 5:15 p.m. on Wednesday after neighbors reported seeing Ernest Vassell walking around with a rifle and pointing it at a dog, CBS 4 Miami reported.
Police said they shouted orders at Vassell - which neighbors heard - but when he turned toward the cops, an officer shot him.
Vassell was flown to Jackson Memorial Hospital, where he later died.
Seems to me the world would be a whole lot safer if we never left our houses either. Stuff happens, you can’t make the world a perfectly safe place.
When you say “our generation” I’m not sure what generation that is.
Have you ever read Freakonomics? Regarding the violence going down in 1993…
How many other posters of a certain age hear the Smashing Pumpkins every time they see the thread title?
Seems to me that wouldn’t have happened if we didn’t have morons, too. Toy guns are legally required to have a blaze day-glo orange barrel (which many adults remove because [del]they are morons[/del] they want a realistic look). Either the guy removed his (and he’s a moron) or the cops shot first and looked later (and they’re morons).
What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? If an adult wants to roam the neighborhood with something that looks like a gun, they can also just buy a gun. Having no toy guns wouldn’t have prevented this. People have been shot because the police thought the victim’s cell phone looked like a gun, too.
Not that any of these have orange tips, but it’s possible to paint a real gun to make it look like a toy. My own AR-15 is pink and very, very real. As a cop, if someone I’m in a confrontation with points a gun at me, even if it looks fake, they’re likely to get shot. Unfortunately, processes like the above duracoating will, in my opinion, lead to more people being shot. We’re all going to start assuming every gun, unless it’s clear plastic, is real until we touch it and prove otherwise ourselves.