Toy guns - yes or no?

[ClickyJoints]

So, I've never allowed toy guns in my house. Because of some weird sense that I'd be an irresponsible parent (maybe because playing with them encourages violence but I'm not actually sure why I'm so adamant about not allowing them as toys).

This year DS (6) has become fixated on weapons. We go to the park - he finds a stick and starts shooting people with it, we're at home and guitars, bits of train track, etc all become pretend guns in his hands. If there are no toys to use he'll just 'shoot' people with his fingers.

So I was thinking about buying him a cheap plastic cowboy gun for Xmas and hoping that having one will make it less illicit and exciting and hopefully after 2 weeks of playing with it he'll get bored and move onto something else. Although there is risk it will fuel is interest but I'm still struggling with the ethics around buying him one.

Do you allow toy guns in your house? If so, what are your reasons (basically help me think it through so I can make my final decision please!)

Literally every boy ever will want to run around bashing things with sticks, having pretend lightsaber fights, and pretending to shoot each other with anything.

Letting them have a toy gun does nothing but make their time spent doing all of this a little bit more fun for them.

If having toy guns encouraged violence then I'm pretty sure the apocalypse would have already happened by now. I certainly had quite a little collection of cap guns and nerf when I was a pre-teen and it absolutely didn't hurt me at all. I also shot bows for a few years, went paintballing, went airsofting, and had more birthday parties at Laser Quest than I really want to admit to...

I'm still a mentally sound, non-violent fully functioning adult male.

So I’m hearing that people find nerf pretty acceptable.

Thanks for your opinions! It's made me realise that letting him play with guns won't automatically turn him into a homicidal adult.

What's the deal with nerf guns?

My dds like their NERF guns but they both find getting shot a bit painful, so they prefer to shoot at targets.

I had one, it made a great cracking noise and let off smoke, i loved it.
Still grew up into a liberal vegetarian, no murders to report as of yet.

From what I have seen, unless you are indoctrinating your child to be obsessed with weaponry parents don't seem to have much control over whether their child ends up interested or not.

My boys will be 5 and 8 soon. Eldest has been obsessed with guns since around the age of 5, and I hated him getting them. He couldn't wait to get his first Nerf, now we have loads!

For Christmas we've got him the laser tag set (no bullets so better for those worried about getting hurt - the foam bullets can hurt at point blank range on bare skin).

We've got the younger child the Nerf that shoots cars out...pics attached.

My parents were in the no toy guns camp and I still am. We are a framing family my dad had real shot guns in the house so they were not seen as toys. We were taught a healthy respect for guns. The seriousness of them came home when my uncle committed suicide with his.