to think you don't let your kid shoot people in the supermarket?

[DonkeyHohtay]

Busy Saturday morning in the supermarket. Boy of about 8 with his Dad. Dad busy filling his basket and behaving perfectly normally.

Boy has a large, black plastic gun. Rifle type rather than a pistol (I'm not a gun expert). Boy is holding gun up to his shoulder, looking down the length of it, pointing it at people and saying "bang bang you're dead". When boy pointed it at me I said - perfectly politely - "Please don't point that at me, I don't like guns".

Father looked at me as if I had grown two heads.

AIBU to think that the supermarket on a busy morning isn't the place for toy guns??

Full disclosure - I'm not a gun fan. Although who is. My kids have in the past had those large "Nerf" type guns which are bright orange and could never be mistaken for a real one. The rules were always that shooting the little foam things at people was not allowed. The had hours of fun in the garden trying to hit a tree or something. This wasn't a gun like that. It was a toy gun, but a black one made to look like the real thing.

AIBU to be a wee bit shocked and think this was completely inappropriate?

I’d have pretended to die! Honestly. Yabu.

He’s a kid playing

Absolutely disgusting if that was my dd she would get a smack on the bum

yes of course,age appropriate play requires parent to hit their child. Teaches child a lesson that their mum is irrational and this is how she parents

So is Woody from Toy Story a no no?

Woody's holster is always empty. He doesn't shoot anyone.

Wouldn't give fake heroin/a syringe?

You mean a toy doctor's set is now offensive?

You're not telling me a toy doctor's set comes with pretend heroin, are you?

A cowboy with an empty holster? Well I never.

Would it be ok to wave a lightsaber around in Waitrose?

The toy syringe can contain whatever substance the child's imagination wants it to presumably?

@gth1234 i used to love the candy cigs and chocolate cigars, there was a gold coloured chocolate tobacco too which was lovely, i can't remember it's name now, gold something or another.
I don't smoke, never have.

Back on thread, a few years ago in a supermarket a little boy who was dressed as a pirate waved his plastic sword at me, i grabbed the french stick from my trolley and shouted 'on guard' before commencing a pretend sword fight. I 'died' obviously. It's just a bit of fun, although tbf, my french stick looked worse for wear after. Haha.

My boys always had toy guns and they used to pretend they were soldiers like their father when they weren't playing cowboys and indians or cops and robbers. They even had the Tin Can Alley game.
They grew up to be rational, calm adults. The closest they get to guns now is shooting metal ducks with an air rifle at a fun fair.

Let kids be kids.

Would it be ok to wave a lightsaber around in Waitrose?

What are the supposed powers of a lightsaber? Presumably they're not things that exist in real life or could be used in real crimes.

Yes, I suppose parents couldn't stop their children pretending to inject heroin if that was where their imagination led. I can't imagine most parents would encourage it it, though - but maybe I'm wrong.

If they want to wave a lightsaber around take them to the park

Supermarkets don’t need to be more irritating

In an ideal world get someone to take the children to the park with their weapon of choice and go shopping alone.

No idea about lightsabers. They sell them in our local Waitrose so I guess they must be ok.

Holster explanation from a fan site -

"In the Toy Story 3 Video Game, there's a collectible item called the Woody's Roundup Card. And one of those cards is called, wait for it, Gunless Law. Woody's empty holster isn't a mistake, it's a statement. A statement that Woody believes in non-violent resolution. A reminder to friend and foe of the kind of justice Woody practices"

FWIW I'd have felt the same as you, OP, but admittedly I'm so anti-firearms that I'm off the scale

It could have been worse, though ... I once went to a childrens' carol service, where one lad of about 5 had been allowed to take his toy gun and stood pretending to shoot the stained glass figure of Christ in a window. I kept it polite of course, but considering some of the looks being exchanged I was surprised to be the first one to say anything

* People wouldn't give their children toy cigarettes to smoke (or at least, not since the 1970s)*
*
You wouldn't give them fake heroin to inject with a toy syringe.

You wouldn't encourage them to play a game where they raped or tortured someone.

Why do you buy them toy guns for pretend shooting?*

This ^

I honestly can not fathom how people can say the child was just playing/chill out etc.

When did pretending to shoot people in a supermarket become acceptable to some people?!

I am honestly baffled and I am certainly not in the easily offended brigade.

Dreadful parenting.

@Gth1234, I agree, how the world does change. I and all my contempories played with toy guns. We used to buy the caps coiled in little round boxes, (do you remember those?) and pretend to shoot each other and anybody else in the firing line. I think the professionally offended would be calling in social services now if they saw a child firing a cap gun. For heavens sake, they are toys, and children like playing with toys. Do you honestly think that because they play with toy guns they are going to turn into mass murderers or have unhealthy thoughts about the joys of shooting people? If that were the case nearly everyone in my generation would be harbouring, or acting on, such thoughts.
I can think about a great many things in this world to get upset about, a child playing is not one of them. I despair of the namby pamby, politically correct, and frankly rather wet culture that seems to be becoming more and more prevalent.

Yep Sparkling sounds good. I try to be zen when shopping

This is an interesting cultural difference.

I was trying to think what I would do if this were my local market. But I'm in America, so people bring their actual guns to the supermarket all the time. You don't see themthey're in people's handbags or even just the glove compartments of their cars, because most states don't allow open carrybut I always assume at least 10-15% of the people around me have guns on them.

And as for kids with barely fake guns pointing them at peoplerealistic looking other than the capI'd actually probably hit the decks.

It sounds overdramatic to you, but we have drills in every one of our state schools teaching kids to run, hide, fight in case a classmate pulls out a gun.

One of the more famous cases of police violence over the past five years was Tamir Rice, who was playing with a fake gun in a playground and got killed by police for doing it.

I imagine in the British context it all seems like jolly fun. But I fucking hate the sheer fear I feel when there's yet another school gun drill, and I think I would have reacted the same as you.

Leaving aside the pro or anti toy gun argument, I was always taught it is rude to point at people - whether with your finger or with a toy.
I would have said something too (having lived in a country where almost everyone owns a gun and kids can do get hold of them with tragic consequences) I don't think pretending to kill people is a particularly healthy game.

Don't get me started on scooters in the supermarket - maybe I'm turning into a grumpy old woman, but I wouldn't have allowed my kids to zoom around the supermarket crashing in to the back of other shoppers ankles, and then given said shoppers a filthy look if they dared to raise an eyebrow at the concept of scooting in a shop.

My dad, who's in his seventies, tells a story of getting cowboy outfit one Christmas and "shooting" the priest during mass.

He's never shot anyone in real life and neither have most of the boys playing shooting games.

It's funny the things we allow children to play with. Used to be OK to buy sweetie cigarettes, and no Christmas stocking was complete with out a liquorice "smokers set" with pretend pipes. Not any more. Though I used to love the sweet tobacco in a yellow tube.

Still OK to play with guns but I got the cold shoulder when I wrote to Argos and suggested they did a My Little Junkie kit aimed at under fives, with a Coke Coke Baby set for the older more sophisticated child.

It’s not something I would get upset about, if another child did it to me.

However I have taught my kids appropriate weapon safety. They know how to operate both handguns and rifles, they were taught to respect firearms from a young age.

'A cowboy works on a ranch, herding cattle and is in popular culture a self-sufficient, capable, courageous lone hero archetype.'

So where does shooting people come into it then?

Talk about reaching 😁

Total non event. I would have smiled and done a star Wars style "pew pew pew" . Kids used to run around playing cowboys and Indians etc

Nott8nightjosepheen

Loads of children in USA die every year from playing with guns

What makes you think she didn't mean it? That feels like a weird assumption esp in USA where there are such major well publicised issues

It would probably cause an adrenaline rush for me, because I was involved in a nasty incident where a guy got drunk and took his air rifle out and started shooting people, he shot at my window. I didn't know itbwas an air rifle, didn't know there was a kind like that, I just knew he'd shot and hurt someone and shot at my window because he could see me. He missed a few people as well.

This was in a bad area in the valleys in Wales where everyone who wasn't me, had various weapons.

So for me to have responded to having any gun shoved in my face in the polite metered way you did OP, would be an achievement I don't think I would reach.