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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

To ask at what age (if ever) do you think guns are appropriate toys for children?

58 replies

RunRunRun123 · 12/08/2014 17:30

My 3yr old has been playing with some other boys today and has come home obsessed with guns and war games. I had visited a friends house and her ds same age had lots of these pretend machine guns and gave my ds one. there was a group of children so it got quite raucous with the children running round killing each other and shouting 'die, die, die' and I ended up making an excuse and leaving (we'd have had to leave shortly after that anyway). I was just really uncomfortable with DS playing war games at 3 yrs old and running around playing guns. My DH shoots (purely for our food) so we have a gun and wonder if this is partly why I am uncomfortable with the concept of this dangerous machine being viewed as a toy. Also I don't want DS ever really associating violence, war and guns etc with fun and play but know as he grows up I can't protect him from this, just thought 3 is still too early. Not sure if I'm valid in my concerns or being pfb?

OP posts:

WorraLiberty · 12/08/2014 17:35

Believe me, if he's not using a toy gun he'll be using his fingers as a toy gun soon enough.

I grew up playing cops and robbers/cowboys and indians with my brother and probably started around that age.

My 3 DC have all had cap guns/spud guns/nerf guns/water pistols and just like me and my brother, have managed to grow up as non violent people

Original poster

RunRunRun123 · 12/08/2014 17:37

I probably am being a bit pfb aren't I? I think I am over sensitive about it with having guns in the house etc.

OP posts:

BeeInYourBonnet · 12/08/2014 17:37

I would prefer my DCs never played with toy guns. I vowed I would never buy them. However when my DS got to about 4yo he started to make guns himself ( out of sticks, fingers, Lego, bananas ... you name it, he made a gun out of it), and went round trying to shoot people!

I've always reacted by saying I don't like guns ( my DCs repeat it like a mantra 'mummy doesn't like guns!), that shooting people is not good, and I don't like them saying things like 'die, die, die! However, DS does have a few gun type things from Lego and playmobil sets now at 5yo, but I draw the line at a replica gun.

I have never once seen my 8yo DD pretend to have a gun, shoot someone, or shout 'die'.

WorraLiberty · 12/08/2014 17:40

I don't know if you're being PFB though

I'm definitely a hypocrite because I didn't mind my kids playing with guns, but when someone bought them a toy dagger, I threw it away because I couldn't stand seeing them pretending to stab each other to death.

So why didn't I mind them shooting each other?!?!

SirChenjin · 12/08/2014 17:40

In my head our house is a gun-free zone, where imaginative games, role play and reading are a feature or our daily life.

In reality we have guns, and screens, and the only role play seems in involve killing each other with said guns.

I'm a bad mother.

5madthings · 12/08/2014 17:41

Oh God when I just had ds1 I was against toy guns... I so had to get over myself!

Seriously they make guns out of Lego, toast, bananas, sticks or anything.

It's just play.

When ds4 was learning to talk so age two, hos first full sentence was "bang bang you're dead, 50 bullets in your head" I was not impressed but we laugh about it now

ICanSeeTheSun · 12/08/2014 17:41

If it isn't a toy gun it will be anything else his imagination can come up with.

WorraLiberty · 12/08/2014 17:43

Oh I completely forgot about the toast guns!!

Itsjustmeagain · 12/08/2014 17:43

I have a 7 year old ds and 4 girls around him. I have never bought any gun or weapon toys BUT our house is constantly like a war zone, with lego guns, guns made of lollipop sticks and bombs made of the couch cushions. I still wouldn't BUY weapon toys but i think its natural for them to play these games as so much of what they see on tv (both fiction and the news) is full of it!

BertieBotts · 12/08/2014 17:45

I don't think you can put an age on it. It's either acceptable or it's not.

Personally I think it's barbaric that we make pretend killing machines out of plastic and find it normal for children to play with them. But most people don't agree with me, so although I would never buy a gun for DS I have accepted it's unavoidable, and I don't ban him from playing it or take away presents people have bought him etc.

I think it's different as well when you have real ones around although of course you'd never have them in reach of the children you do want them to respect and understand the danger of them.

PlaydoughGirl · 12/08/2014 17:45

In theory, unless its a Nerf gun, I wouldn't want toy guns in the house.
Having said that, I have two spectacularly unimaginative & very literal children (one with ASD, one maybe) and should either of them ever role play shooting someone with a banana/fingers/stick, I think I would jump for joy, film it, and immediately send it to all family members

hollie84 · 12/08/2014 17:46

I'm not keen on guns that look like replicas but DS1 has had bubble guns/water pistols since about 3. He also uses various objects to be laser guns.

I don't mind playing with guns but I don't allow games to get too aggressive. Running around shouting die or getting physical would have been a step too far for me.

DeadSirius · 12/08/2014 17:49

It's a tough one. For the most part, I don't agree with making gun toys or violent pretend games forbidden, and I think pretend play of this sort is fine for slightly older children - some research shows it can actually be beneficial in developing things like a sense of morality, consequences, etc. And as with most things, if you forbid children from them completely, it can become more tantalizing.

But I think three is too young, especially in your circumstances. He's too young to fully understand consequences, the lines between pretend and real are too blurred, and his concept of death is probably not developed. At this age, especially with a gun at home, he needs to be taught that a gun is never a toy, that he should not touch or play with a gun, that if he sees a gun he needs to find an adult. When he's older, he'll be able to understand the difference between playing pretend and an actual gun, but at this age he might not. Him turning random objects or his fingers into guns is one thing, but I wouldn't let him play with actual toy weapons yet.

WorraLiberty · 12/08/2014 17:50

Yeah I must admit I would stop them from shouting 'Die Die Die' even if they were playing with a teddy bear.

SonorousBip · 12/08/2014 17:51

Hmm - I was very "no guns, wooden toys preferably, imaginative creative play only, preferably using twigs and string" when my dc were born. They are now 10 and 12.

I think my refined verison is that I do not like them being used in an overly aggressive manner. I would have problems, absolutely, with a mock dagger, and with agreesive language being used. But now my dc are older, I see it as art of their playing - and to be honest a good antidote to screens. They have had a paintball party, which was very popular, lots of fun, involved the whole class etc. plus they have quite a lot of nerf guns, which they get a lot of enjoyment out of. Dh has several times taken a few children up to the common with nerf guns, a bucket of bullets and let them run around for an hour or so. The dc also spent two hours with quite a few friends (girls and boys) in the back garden last week with nerf guns and water balloons and had a great time.

It honestly is something your perspective changes on.

For the record, they do not play COD on screens, tends to be mostly minecraft.

Hurr1cane · 12/08/2014 17:51

I think if you can avoid them then do.

But if they become obsessed with them, it's best to let them go through the phase.

If you start making them something that's 'banned' they'll be more interested in them.

PedantMarina · 12/08/2014 17:54

You're not being PFB, but there's not a lot of hope of keeping guns out of DCs' lives, or these 'killing sprees'. Best thing you can do is ensure DCs understand the difference between play and real, and, yes it can happen when they're 3yo.

We're lucky in that we're reenactors, and DS (now 4) has grown up watching real people do staged battles where some "die", then later the announcer says "I call upon the dead to rise" and he can see that it's just pretend. So we applied that to, for instance, broken toys. (esp if it's DS wot breaks them - bonus!). And we've reinforced it with watching films (something might only be "pretend scary", for instance).

Many's the time we've said [of a broken toy, for instance]: "It's broken broken, Mummy can't fix it, Daddy can't fix it, it's not 'call upon the dead to rise' broken". And he gets it.

YoureAllABunchOfBastards · 12/08/2014 17:56

DS1 is obsessed. If he 'wins' on a fairground stall, he always chooses any toy with a gun in - police set, cowboy set etc.

ADHDNoodles · 12/08/2014 17:56

Hard to call, we all grew up using our water guns to shoot each other and we had to fall down and "die" if we got shot. We also had neighbors that let us borrow toy guns and we would run in the woods shooting each other. As an adult I still love laser tag and to a lesser extent paintball.

I also had family that shot rifles and guns at parties and I got to shoot at birds (flying orange discs, not real birds). I was never confused about the difference between a real gun that could kill people and a fake gun that was just a toy.

But being American, I have more to worry about with DD even doing pretend play. There's a bit of a gun hysteria here in schools. A kid got suspended for biting a poptart into a gun, and a 5 year old got suspended for saying she wanted to shoot another girl with her Hello Kitty Bubble Gun. Even pretending to shoot someone could get you suspended or labeled as an "at risk" child. Which is stupid, but considering all the school shootings and no real known cause for why these kids do it, people are paranoid.

PedantMarina · 12/08/2014 18:00

Oh, and the only guns toy guns we have are replica pirate flintlocks that shoot darts. And even that got taken away for a lo-ho-hong time when he aimed it at a person (me, ftr) He hasn't done that again.

MrTumblesBavarianFanbase · 12/08/2014 18:00

If you don't let them have toy guns (and of course its fine not to) they will build them out of Duplo, or just use sticks... I never bought mine toy guns until last dressing up season (carnaval season where we luve) when all 3 wanted to be cowboys, so got them as part of their costumes - there seemed no point saying no by then as they were just playing those games with improvised weaponry. Only way you'll stop it is keeping them away from visual media and other kuds... and odds are even if they've never heard of guns they'll sword fight instead (with sticks if no swords).

I make sure my 6 year old knows that real guns kill and cause horrible pain and lasting disability, and are not toys but 3 year old is too young to grasp the concept yet - no access to real guns fortunately!

thegreylady · 12/08/2014 18:26

I hate realistic looking toy guns but don't mind 'fantasy' guns like water guns, space guns etc. I banned guns for my ds but he made one out of clothes pegs. I had a thread here a while ago about asking that my two dgs aged 5&7 not play with their dad's old toy guns in my presence. The boys didn't mind at all and seem to have forgotten about the guns now.

promisedyouarosegarden · 12/08/2014 18:34

Inappropriate toy at any age.

BertieBotts · 12/08/2014 18:40

DeadSirius might have a point and if we lived rurally and therefore DS was likely to come across a real gun at some point, I think I would be instilling gun fear/rules/safety at a very early age.

sausageandorangepickle · 12/08/2014 18:49

We have never had realistic looking toy guns in the house, but the teenagers did have nerf guns and water pistols/super soakers when they were younger (still have some in a box under the bed) DS3 (3) had never been bothered till we visited friends and they had a whole box of toy guns. He spent all the time we were there playing with them, and was insistent on making guns from spoons/anything when we got back. DS2 let him have a bright yellow nerf gun, and we took it to the park with strict instructions he could only shoot at trees and bins. His infatuation lasted about 3 days and he is not at all bothered again now, the nerf gun is safely back under the bed, until he is a fair bit older.

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