Toy guns/weapons

[MumbleJumble123]

Am I being unreasonable to really, really hate these.
I honestly can’t understand who’s buying them or why anyone would want to buy a replica gun for their toddler/young child.

I’ve just picked my 3 year old up from nursery and another mum has brought a gun to the playground for him to play with during pick up (there’s a small park/plaza outside the nursery where parents take their kids to play if they’re not in a rush).

My son saw the gun and announced ‘I want one too’. I initially just said no like I do with most of the other plastic tat he asks for.
But then he said ‘but I need to kill people, pew, pew, pew’. (He obviously doesn’t actually understand what this means, he’s just copying)

I’m quite upset about this, I really didn’t want him exposed to this stuff so young. Obviously stopping him playing with other children isn’t an option so how do you explain in a way that he understands why they’re bad and why he’s not allowed it.

It feels different to when I just say no because we don’t need anymore dolls, trucks or Paw Patrol dogs.

Am I being unreasonable for having such a strong reaction and feeling like I need to make a bigger deal than when I just say no to other toys.
If so, what do I say/do?

They do have little archery sets however with a target

Because no one has ever been harmed by a cross bow/bow and arrow.

@LegoLandslide if you look on Amazon for tube water guns you’ll find ones that aren’t gun shaped.

We’re 100% anti toy guns - totally unnecessary. We never had any in the house although obviously they still played’gun’ games but we explained that guns were unacceptable. Thankfully it was only a short lived phase before their interests changed for the better.
Guns were the primary reason (along with the idiot Trump) that we didn’t move to the US.

I had a no guns in the house rule, guns aren’t toys blah blah blah then on my eldest sons 9th birthday someone bought him a nerf gun and the rest is history!

I suppose I just feel that he’s very young to even be exposed to the idea of guns, violence and killing people.

He does play in his own way but it’s based on what he’s aware of. So when he plays policemen it’s very innocent and the ‘crimes’ are things like ‘taking sweets without asking mummy and daddy’ or ‘drawing on the coffee table with the crayons’ (both crimes he has committed 😂).
Again, when he plays firemen he’s not really aware that there’s danger. He just likes to shout ‘nee-naw’ and pretend to use his toy fire extinguisher/climb on the sofa to rescue his toy cat.

Guns and killing people just seems very grown-up (and a particularly sad and nasty part of being grown up that I’d like to protect him from for a bit longer).

I had the same feelings but honestly my son can turn anything into a weapon. Sticks, forks, cute gender neutral wooden toy carrots, literally anything. So I gave up the fight but drew the line at fake machine guns or anything that looks real enough to give me a fright. Nerf guns, water guns and tiny plastic army figures everywhere now. He’s not a violent kid and it never turns into anything troubling so I just try to ignore it.

I always preferred my older brothers' toy six shooter and Walther PPK to the toy iron and Tiny Tears doll/blue striped buggy/dolls pram I'd been given by somebody hoping I'd be 'a proper little girl and not a boy in disguise'.

Strangely, I've never felt the need to commit highway robbery whilst wearing face paint and a frilly shirt, colonise a country and exterminate the indigenous population, nor have I lived a hundred lives as a spy. Not particularly keen on ironing, either, tbh. Pretty sure that neither of my kids have killed somebody because we'd stalk one another around the garden with supersoakers in summer, either.

It's as though they're toys for play and not a determining factor in sociopathy.

Children have great imaginations. I remember daydreaming and making stories in my head about battles and kings and queens and yes, there were deaths and killings, sometimes quite gruesome ones and torture of "prisoners" in the dungeons. I simply don't see that as an issue. Fake swords are great for pretending to be a pirate. Children are capable of understanding pretend in this way - they may pretend to shoot each other with fake guns or stab each other with fake swords and laugh and say "you're dead", but you can bet they'd react differently if it actually happened for real in front of them. They aren't going to mistake someone with a real weapon killing someone for some harmless game, there is clearly a difference and I think we as parents underestimate children in regards to this sometimes. Do we not remember being children?

It’s interesting you use the example of the toy kitchen, I definitely see a link between my son playing with it and him wanting to get more involved in cooking for real. He also watches me cook in the kitchen and then goes off to his play kitchen to try and copy what I’m doing.
I really do see a link between how they play and what behaviours are normalized (e.g. my son uses the same phrases we do when he ‘parents’ his dolls, or he uses his little toy figures to act out stories he’s seen in books/TV).

I was widowed when PG with my DS so he was brought up in a single parent family until I re-married when he was about 9 years old.

Out of necessity he had to be in the kitchen with me when he was little & I was cooking meals. From an early age (say 16-18 months) he would be sitting in his high chair making cheese straws out of cheese that I'd grated & left-over pastry he cut out pastry to make jam & fruit tarts (from fruit purees that I'd made), (yes, ok barely edible, but he was so proud to take his own cooking to nursery & GPs made all the right noises telling him that they'd never eaten such delicious food!) he also mashed potatoes & veg for cottage pies, made the pastry in the food processor - well, moved the button to make it whir until I said that was enough. As he got older he moved on from that to standing on a chair stirring sauces, making scone-based pizzas by measuring out the flour & fat, mixing it in the fod processor, rolling it out, spreading the tomato base & placing onions, peppers, salami etc that I had cut up for him onto the pizza base. As well as many other meals.

All under my close supervision of course.

He learned that he needed to wash his hands before cooking, between handling meat & veg as well as basic cookery skills.

And so it moved on so that when he was old enough he was able to help cook a whole meal. As a teen & early adult we had great fun cooking together and he started to cook alone and to adapt recipes to his own liking as well as to develop his own favourite recipes.

He's now nearly 30 & a successful chef.

'nuff said. 😇

I have two boys and was very anti toy gun. Refused all gun related toys, had a wide range of toys including duplo, a toy kitchen, playmobil, lots of the usual stuff. My eldest really wanted a toy gun from as soon as he understood they existed. I wasn't sure where it came from, we didn't allow unsuitable tv etc.
The first time he was allowed choose his own toy with his own money in a toy shop he chose a gun, he might have been 5 then.

I was disappointed but decided to go with it rather than escalate the issue. Was resolute against nerf until they were given some smaller ones birthday presents. Wasn't thrilled about it. But they have all sorts of 'weapons' - swords, cheap little bows and arrows, etc. They've played loads of war or police games. But absolutely aren't allowed hurt each other.

I have wondered where the drive to play shooting or war games came from.

Now the elsldst is 9 it's just one small element of different games he once played or still plays. It doesn't seem like such a big deal.