Boys playing with toy guns

[Ouluckyduck]

harmless or not? What rules apply in your house? Will you even allow them, if not, why not, what are your concerns?

Six year old ds loves guns and playing cowboys, and I struggle to see the harm. Interestingly the people I mix with in the uk don't seem yo mind, but back home in Germany people are horrified.

How about girls playing with toy guns? Bought DDs a couple of cap guns at Blackgang Chine Frontier Land, they enjoyed being "cowgirls" with the other children, and DH quite enjoyed playing too :)

Cannot connect playing with guns and going on to shoot people. That IMO is crazy. What about bow and arrows, swiss army knives, pirate swords.

I think there are two different things - playing at shooting and playing at killing.

I am all for shooting as sport - and would encourage archery and target shooting as both take a huge amount of focus and concentration and hand/eye coordination.

Playing at killing is a different matter, it makes me uncomfortable, but i wouldn't be surprised if somebody told me it was an important developmental stage.

We all played War & Star Wars at primary school. As far as I know, no-one has gone onto commit firearms offences...

I agree with teacherwith2kids. I was against them to begin with, but even so DS,with a single mother and little contact with older DCs,managed to make one when first presented with Duplo. He also made them out of toast! It is a phase - they grew up to be peace loving.

How are children supposed to play:

Cowboys and indians without guns?
Pirates without swords?
Starwars without light sabers?

I guess playing doctors and vets would also be banned since a toy needle is usually required and heaven forbid the child becomes a drug addict due to playing with a toy as a child

Perhaps toy horses should be banned in case they encourage children to like horses and want to ride real ones. Those children may have a nasty fall where the horse lands on top of them (happened to me when I was 10) as a result of playing with a toy.....

Some parents are way too overprotective/spoil all the fun

My mum banned guns in our house when we were kids, but not swords or bows and arrows bizarrely enough We made guns out of Lego and sticks instead

DS has broad swords, daggers, rapiers, bows and arrows, a cap gun, a spud gun, 3 Nerf guns, a star trek phaser, 4 sonic screwdrivers (not technically a weapon), a water pistol and 2 light savers. Oh and a Harry Potter wand.

His play with these toys centres around superhero play, epic battles between dragons, cowboys, wizards, knights, aliens you name it.

I don't "police" his play. I'm far more concerned about what message that gives than "goodies/baddies" role play. I think it's more harmful for adults to "judge" the way their children play. I don't mean intervening in disputes, but to say to a child
"the things you're interested in exploring are BAD". That's not a good message.

It's perfectly natural for kids to want to play violent games sometimes.

I read a fascinating book by Penny Holland, called "We Don't Play With Guns Here". I thoroughly recommend it. She explains the benefits that children gain from war and weapon play. She's an early childhood researcher at a London university.

I think the PC brigade need to rethink their position on guns really.

I agree with maybe now about the distinction between shooting and killing. I h

Light saBers. Not light savers

Also: guns don't kill people. PEOPLE kill people.

Badgerina, you do know that is one of the main arguments of the American pro gun lobby? I think it's a lot easier for people to kill people if guns are freely available and considered a normal part of life.

Chandellina. Yes. It's an NRA motto. Perhaps I should have included a emoticon

What I was trying to say was that playing with toy guns won't create a generation of psychopathic high-school murderers.

I should add that my DH and I are pacifists! Many people find it hilarious that we "allow" DS to play with toy guns. The thing is though, he loves Star Wars, and cowboys, and medieval knights (as well as Lego, making houses, playing with dolls and having his nails painted). How could he reinact these things without weapons????

Guns don't kill people.....Rappers do

When I was young I had cap guns, water pistols and replica 'cowboy' guns. We watched westerns on TV at my Grandmother's house and acted them out.

I wouldn't even squash a spider in real life.

Why do kids need replicas to play imagination games? I don't get it. I've no problem with my boys playing the sort of games that traditionally involve guns with fake guns, toast guns, finger guns, duplo guns and the same goes for swords and so on. Doesn't mean that I want replicas around that will encourage those games. Let them properly use their imaginations! I'm a bit about providing all the specific costumes etc to inspire imagination - surely it deadens it?

People seem to like taking offence in everything

solidgoldbrass "thick, wanky, privileged parent" eh?

DS(8) does not have toy guns. We are involved in field sports and DH has legally held guns in the house which DS has been bought up around. He will help DH to clean them after use and deeply covets a days rabbit shooting with an air rifle.
From our personal point of view, we could not allow DS to grow up playing with guns and pointing them at people, then expect him to behave safely with the real thing. He is a sensible little boy but it seemed unfair to put him in that sort of situation.
I guess this is not the same for most people and generally we are completely laid back about stuff like this. Hopefully our up-tightness over this issue will impress on DS how important it is.
If our situation was different I would not have a real issue with toy guns.

And, when teaching them to "sit at table, hold KNIFE AND FORK" like this ! do point out they are not to jab anyone with said "weapons" and , if he /they should ever want a motorbike(shudder) when they get older , remind them that bikes "kill!!!"

tryingtonotfeckup,
thank for your comment. Son is fine now but he looked terrified last night when the police came to visit but he is confused as he can not understand what he has done wrong, as he says, " we were playing, everyone was playing with them and was laughing and having fun, no one was hurt and no one was meant to get hurt. Why did i get get into trouble for this especially when no one else did."

I cant answer his questions as i really do not know the answers to them, I could only take an educated guess that the person who complained took offence and told his mum he had been shot by a BB gun, even though they are in no way BB guns they were playing with. Naturally the boys mum called the police as i would have too if i thought someone was running about with a BB gun shooting children. The police came out and confiscated all the toy guns but they seem to have not used any common sense at all in dealing with this.
They have the guns and surely they can see that they are only cheap toys and nothing more. These toys fire a tiny plastic ball about 10 feet if you are lucky but even after a 2 hour conversation with the officers last night they still insisted they are BB guns and nothing i was going to say was going to make any difference so my son was charged with assault for playing and doing what children do. I got rather frustrated with them and suggested to the officers that maybe if they went back to the station and ran about it playing with the toy guns as the kids had been doing then they would see that they are harmless but i dont think they appreciated my suggestion.

I am in two minds at the moment as to what my next step should be, I can either forget it and move on or i can fight it all the way. I want to fight it as it really is not fair and in my opinion a simple telling off from the police would have been enough but for my son it would probably be best if it were just forgotten about. I need to think about my son so it will probably just be swept under the carpet but i still want to take the police on. Pretty sure the national press would have a field day with it but unfortunately that's not my style and i do not want to embarrass my son.

I have never been keen on toy guns myself but i have never banned them or tried to persuade my boys from not playing with them. Even after last nights experience I will not be banning them or stopping my boys from playing with them. I would much rather they were having harmless fun with something like that than sitting in a bedroom leading a lonely existence and playing a games console.

Maybe I am pushing my luck but my 2 boys are just in from running around the village with their nerf guns which to be honest are much more powerful than the toy gun he was playing with the other night.

I don't mind plastic ,bright coloured water pistols and nerf guns,because they are so obviously toys, but I object to replicas and BB guns, which a lot of boys in school seem to have access to.
School rules are we don't allow guns in any shape or form, even using fingers. Children are told that we do not allow guns because real ones kill, and that it is not nice to pretend to kill people.The same goes for other weapons. The only time they are ignored is on dressing up days,so swords,lightsabres etc are tolerated, but not encouraged to be played with during the day.

I have never allowed my 2 boys to have guns, even though they often asked for them.

Banning toy guns is a sure indicator of a thick, wanky, privileged parent.

I don't agree, sorry. I know families on our street who don't allow their children to play shooting games because they have had experience of real gun crime and have lost friends and family to it. Nothing privileged about that. Shooting games are banned in the playground at one of our local schools; a gun was found in a child's school bag left outside the gate in some sort of gang 'drop off' and a young woman was shot dead in an 'execution' opposite the main school entrance. I could go on.

Banning shooting games or toy guns isn't something I would do; I allow my children to play those games but, given what those local families live with and fear in real life, I'd never dream of criticising their choices. I'd walk a mile in their shoes before I did that, and God forbid I ever have to.

I never bought them when my sons were very little. They just started picking up sticks and making guns out of lego and shooting me anyway. Now they have a really impressive arsenal. Loved guns, bows and arrows and crossbows when i was young myself.

bluebreeks

That is awful, I cannot believe how unreasonable and unfair that is. You're right there is no easy solution to it.

I don't like toy guns and I won't be buying them for my dd. But I do probably fall into the wanky, privileged parent catagory.