Have we gotten ridiculous?

[weesie]

This says it all, well almost: story

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[swampwitch]

I don't have a problem with this, actually. I think it should be limited to anything that could be mistaken for a real gun up close or far away. I would never want to keep kids from the joy of super soakers.

I believe there's some law that says toy guns need to have at least a colorful piece on the end of the barrel so when pointed doesn't look real. However, that doesn't help if the thing is barrel down in somebody's pants.

ALL toy guns should be a really obnoxious day-glo color all over.

On a personal note, I was a kid in the 60's and 70's, and my ex-Marine drill sergeant father wouldn't buy us toy guns (water pistols were fine, especially the cheap orange plastic ones...and when we started driving he made sure we had mace). He said if we wanted to shoot something we could join the Marines when we were old enough, and if we wanted to hunt it'd be after taking the classes at the Isaac Walton League. However, we had steel tipped lawn darts and those clacker things that could give you and those around you concussions.

 

[weesie]

But, I have to think things have gone beyond stupid.

A little kid got suspended for biting his pop-tart into the shape of a gun.

A 1st grade kid got suspended for telling another kid she was gonna shoot her with her "bubble making" gun.

A boy in about the 4th grade had to have his "Birthday cupcakes" adjusted by removing little plastic army men from them that were decorations.

This is just 3 examples of the extreme level that this has gone to. There are many, many more stories just like these.

I am wondering when they will get around to taking the letters F, L, and P from the alphabet because their shape resembles a gun..... oh, and lets' not forget the number 7. Hey, it's not that far fetched!

 

[swampwitch]

I'm not sure erring on the side of caution is really all that extreme. Sure, this does seem silly, but with so many school shootings and the bullying suicides I wonder if maybe teaching them super young that no kind of intimidation, no matter how trivial, is ever OK isn't the right thing to do. Remember, we're talking about IN SCHOOL. The world is a scary place, but school shouldn't be. JMO, of course.

 

[skiny]

I've never been a firm believer that playing with toys turns you into a psychopath. When I was a kid every young boy had a toy gun at some point. We used to make guns that really fired with elastics and clothes pins. They bloody well hurt too when you accidently got hit with one. We all watched Gunsmoke or The Lone Ranger before school and Bonanza at night and run around pointing our fingers at each other making gun noises but I don't recall knowing a single person who learned from these experiences that it's ok to kill people.

I think we all knew at a pretty early age that if you pointed a real gun at someone and fired it there would be a big bloody mess, a terrible injury or death and a hell of a lot of trouble for doing it. I watched The Three Stooges too. I never went out in the school yard and wacked someone in the head with a hammer and then poked them in the eyes. We knew there were things you didn't "really" do regardless of what games you played or watched on TV.

I think there is a much larger cultural problem that needs to be dealt with. The availability of real firearms is only part of the problem. There's an attitude with far too many adults that firearms are a necessity. An attitude that disputes and intrusions are best handled with either the threat of being shot or killed. When children hear real people whether they're neighbours or family members say things like "if someone comes on my property I'll shoot them" or any other statement that promotes gunfire as an option for conflict resolution it has a much greater effect than something they watched on a television show that they know is not real.

 

[Slotster!]

Ha ha! This has got be from The Onion surely? Ridiculous.

 

[Balthazar]

Canada: 30M people, 10M guns: I can count on one hand the spree shootings.
Switzerland: full of guns: no gun violence.
Mexico: All civilian guns illegal: Extreme gun violence, most dangerous place on Earth.
Norway: extremely tough gun laws, worst case of shooting spree in recent history.

So maybe, just maybe, gun accessibility for honest citizens and other stupid sh*t like toy guns aren't the problem.

 

[weesie]

My hubby is retired military. He has always had a respect for firearms and we have taught our children the same.

Getting children to "trade" their toy guns for books and a chance to win a bicycle sounds nice, but is it the proper way to "teach" them?

If a kid is playing cops and robbers in the yard with neighbors, should we call for an intervention? These toy gun wielding children will grow up to be psychopaths?

Will this stop before they take classics off of television just because it is a "western" and they used guns in those days? Or the cartoons? Or anything with the slightest "resemblance" to a gun? A half-eaten pop-tart?

I am not saying I have the answers, but, I am saying this is getting to an extreme.

 

[skiny]

Canada: 30M people, 10M guns: I can count on one hand the spree shootings.
Switzerland: full of guns: no gun violence.
Mexico: All civilian guns illegal: Extreme gun violence, most dangerous place on Earth.
Norway: extremely tough gun laws, worst case of shooting spree in recent history.

So maybe, just maybe, gun accessibility for honest citizens and other stupid sh*t like toy guns aren't the problem.

You can't really count Canada as a gun toting country. I'm not a young man and I've rarely known anyone in my life that owned guns. You have to remember that a very large percentage of Canada is made up of rural neighbourhoods and very sparsely populated areas. I've never done any kind of study on the subject but the impression I get from my personal experience is that most Canadians have no interest in owning guns for personal protection. Hunting is another story. Once you leave the cities and enter the small towns where the homes are separated with large tracks of forest you'll find that people do own rifles. Often several of them.

To be honest, I'm always surprised when I hear about the amount of guns owned in this country. You just don't see them or hear about them very often. Maybe other people who frequent different social circles have different opinions or perspectives but that's just the way it seems to me.

And I've agreed in other threads that a majority of people owning many guns is not "THE" problem but I do think it's result of the culture. There is no one off reason that people slip a gear upstairs and shoot up a shopping mall or school yard but I do think that making guns less accessible is part of the solution along with a change of attitude that guns should be used by the general public for protection and often retaliation.

People want to blame television, video games and toys for children growing up to become psychopaths when the children are watching their real role models, the real adults in their lives buy, own and carry guns for "protection." Not every gun owner is able to instill in their children the kind of respect that these weapons deserve because not every gun owner has that respect for the weapons themselves. And it becomes even worse when children hear adults talk about their right to use these weapons on other people regardless of the circumstances.

If a young boy plays with dolls it won't make him gay. If he plays with a hockey stick it won't make him a good hockey player and if he plays with a gun it won't make him a psychopath.

 

[weesie]

I agree with you skiny!