Children and Toy Guns: Why Real Looking Toy Guns Should Be Banned

I grew up around guns, and I completely support gun rights. But I don't allow my children to have toy guns, and I never have.

It's an obvious choice to me. Guns aren't toys.

Anyway, why do toys today have to look just like the real thing? When I was a kid, twine became whips or lassos, and a plywood board we slung on ropes in a tree became a pirate ship. Willow branches with string became bows, and dried horseweed stems made great arrows. Guns for our games were appropriately-shaped sticks.

We had toy guns. But we rarely used them. They were never out when we needed the gun for a game. Nature and imagination were our main toys, and they were great ones.

I've seen a number of disturbing things lately regarding toy guns. Rosie O'Donnell, famed anti-gun activist, completely lost her mind and gave her little girl a realistic looking gun and bandolier. When we visited Niagara Falls, a little boy aged about four adorable child ran and played with his realistic AK-47 under the watchful eyes of his burkha'd mother and another woman.

These things disturb me.

When Guns Are Toys

Everywhere, little boys in poor communities pick up real guns and treat them as toys, and someone gets hurt. This is in houses where the gun owners swear they had the gun locked up, or hidden, or otherwise secured.

My father owned dozens of guns, from shotguns to a real German luger brought home by my WWII-hero uncle. None of us would have dreamed of touching them, though they were out in the open on gun racks, or in the truck, or upon occasion left leaning next to the door. We had one cousin who thought it would be cool to play with one, but my brothers and I sat on him til he changed his mind.

I don't remember ever being told explicitly that guns were dangerous. It was obvious. My dad hunted sometimes, and we saw what guns did. He did show us how to handle them safely, and left our education at that.

Today, people freak out when parents don't lock up guns. But they don't blink when children play with these realistic guns. And that's after little boys being shot by cops who mistake the toy guns for real ones.

But playing isn't the greatest danger of toy guns.

Using guns as playthings builds up an unnatural toleration for the real thing. Children achieve a comfort level with things that look like guns, to the point that they think a real gun must also be safe to play with. If there are no bullets in it, it's safe. I've practiced with toys, so I know how to handle a real gun.

Then also, a real gun has a comforting weight in the hands, something that really attracts children. And if an admired relative older brother or father has played with the gun in front of the child, well, that's even worse.

As for keeping realistic toy guns legal and available why? Children have imaginations that defeat adults. They can turn sticks into guns, no problem, and the bright-green squirtgun works just as well in play as a blue-metal-colored toy gun. Adults have the misguided impression that better toys are more real looking toys; children do just as well with toys that require a little more imagination, and often better.