Toy Guns

[Nutjob]

Something someone said on the 'Boy's Toy's' thread about their ds playing with Action Men (minus guns)struck a chord with me, but rather than hijack the thread I thought I'd start a new one, so here goes!!

The other day whilst out shopping my ds dragged dh and me into a toy shop as he wanted a blow-up Spiderman, dh picked up a toy gun and suggested we get him that too. I said I didn't want him playing with guns, toy or otherwise, and he said that I was being silly and overly PC and what was the difference between that and his Light Sabre? Anyway, we didn't get it but what do you think was I being daft or do you agree?

i really think we could go over the top with this conversation, i am sure that a lot has to do with the environment children are brought up in and not the single factor of giving a child a gun. the same goes for barbies and the ethos that we are teaching our children to want to look thin and perfect and action men wanting our boys to look muscular and act macho. i think its all bll*ks. i would be concerned if i lived in an area where it was a day to day issue, where i knew that killing people to get some sort of financial benefit was a highly likley career move. this would certainly apply to some areas in manchester. but then in the area where i lived car crime was the career move of choice, joy riding and burning them out, driving at fast as you can. should i have steered my children away from car chasse films or playing with cars? playing driving them fast and making the screetch noise as they turn a ccorner or launching a matchbox car of a cardboard box to watch it roll. would you think your child disturbed for crashing cars into each other? am sure some of you may, but i think its perfectly normal development, accompanied by a loving environment at home a nurturing environment at school and hopefully for those of us lucky enough a nice area to live. i mean how far do we go?

Can't really add anything either except its personal choice, i think the more you forbid something in a child, the more appealing it makes it.

I agree with aloha and rhubarb etc - toy guns have been around for years, so you can't attribute the rise in gun crime to this. Like Aloha, I lived in Peckham for many years (pre children ) and now, some years later, live near a similar area. Taking the toy gun/gun crime link very literally, I can't remember seeing many children playing with toy guns in the street in Peckham, and they certainly don't around here either. Scooters are the thing to have, preferably electric ones.

Bearing in mind that gun crime is a reality here, I don't let my sons take toy guns out, because I am worried they could point them at strangers as we drive past in the car. I have a horror of the wrong person thinking the gun is real.

I also think toy gun play is a passing phase - my 8 year old, in common with all his friends would prefer playing on a playstation, gameboy, or with bikes, bey blades, lego or pokemon cards. Go into any toy shop and toy guns form a tiny part of the range of toys on display. They are hardly promoted, and usually cheap and badly made. If toy guns were that popular and there really was a big demand for them, wouldn't toy companies have developed this lucrative business in some way? Or do you think water blasters, light sabres, even Harry Potter magic wands are the modern equivalent?

I agree it's personal choice, and we have chosen not to allow our boys to have guns or plastic swords. (Yes, they do want them. DS1 wrote to father christmas asking for a sword and a gun, because he knew I wouldn't get him one!)

But PLEASE don't let your boys take guns to other people's houses, or to parties, or other functions. Just spent a fractious time at a bring and share supper - loads of lovely kids, but one had been allowed to bring two guns he'd just bought with his Christmas money. Result: Chaos. Incidentally the same boy who brought a toy sword round when we had an open house: same result.

If I allow my children to come to your house to play, I don't care what they play with, that's part of the deal. The above 'communal' situations are particularly difficult, as the parents are still there. On a playdate, I would not hesitate to remove such an item from a child on entry, and return it to him when he leaves, but it's not so easy with an all-age social.

My sons recently had 4 and 6yr-old girls round to play, so are no heavily into playing weddings, which is far more pleasant all round!

Kmg I agree with you! I don't think it a good idea to let my sons take toy guns out in public just for the reasons you state. They can cause enough chaos at home as it is.

As for allowing other children to play with guns when they come round, if the children are older and come round on a playdate by themselves, then I don't hide the toy guns. The older boys prefer other toys on the whole. If they started rampaging round the house with guns, then I'd stop the game if any falling out looked likely. I would expect the parents of an older child to tell me in advance if they have a strict no guns policy.

If my younger son's playmates visit, I do try to keep the guns in my older son's bedroom and, most importantly, ask the accompanying parent if toy guns are allowed, making it clear that I can easily hide all guns if necessary.

Can I add a little about carrying real looking guns. My uncle was in the firearms unit of the CID, and shot a man who he thought was carrying a real gun. The man lived but was badly injured, and my uncle has never forgiven himself, but he fired out of self defense for himself and the officers he was supposed to be protecting. The gun was a childs toy but looked incredibly real.
Gun crime is becoming something that yunger and younger people are being involved in. While a police officer would be ridiculously wrong to shoot a 6 year old, what about a 12 year old who was brandishing a replica gun.
I think you have to be vey careful when guns look like they could be real.

I don't think toy guns cause real gun crime, not at all, but I've been thinking about this since there are some persuasive arguments for letting children have them made by custardo, tigermoth and others.

OK, they're toys, for one thing and don't actually hurt anyone and yes, boys in particular will make a gun out of something else if they're not allowed them. So forbidding them can make them attractive. But I forbid other things for the good of my son and it doesn't always make it more attractive. Anyway, if I think something is wrong or bad for him I will forbid it while I have the power to do so, so I'm not sure I could go with the 'I might as well let him have one since forbidding it makes it attractive' argument.

I also don't think that giving children toy guns teaches them that violence is acceptable but maybe it teaches them that guns are an everyday OK sort of object? No-one (I assume) has a problem with the fact that you can't buy sweet cigarettes any more because smoking is a stupid and dangerous thing to do and sweet cigarettes might encourage children to think smoking is OK. Is it different? Maybe, but the principle is similar. I also don't necessarily think playing with guns makes behaviour worse. Although I have seen a group of boys go off on an aggressive one while playing with them I've seen them do that without toy guns too.

Yes, of course children learn from what is around them and other general upbringing points are more important than the toy guns issue. I do also realise that it's all very well for us to sit here talking about whether we should allow toy guns or not when there are children growing up in poverty and surrounded by real guns and crime etc.

So I don't think toy guns cause gun crime, child violence (always) or future bad adult behaviour but I'm still uneasy about them. It's interesting though that some of you wouldn't let your kids take their toy guns out in public. How many other toys could you say that about? If it's not acceptable in public (I know, because it could be mistaken for a real one) why is it acceptable to have one? Not criticising anyone BTW, just think it's interesting.

So having gone through all that I think my objection to them is that they normalise something that is designed for killing and only killing. Playing screeching around corners with cars is different: cars aren't designed for car chases, they're designed to transport people.

Tigermoth and everyone else with older children, maybe I am being incredibly naive in thinking I can stem the flow of guns into the house as ds gets older but I'm going to have a good try anyway. I'll let you know in a few years!

While we're on the subject, a friend was trying to calm her son down (he was brandishing a large toy gun at another child) with the loud admonishment "xxx, put that down, it's NOT A WEAPON!" err, she then realised it was

great reply WWW!

Strange as it may seem, since I tolerate toy guns up to a point, I too share your unease with toy guns, www. That is also a reason I don't let my sons take them out - it's not just the fear that someone will mistake them for the real thing. I'm also very, very aware that lots of parents don't allow toy guns full stop, so don't want to create unnecessary angst amongst others when we are out.

For me, the turning point came when my son started acquiring toy guns at fairs and boot sales - I'd give him some pocket money, he would wander off for a minute, buy a gun for 10p and reappear with it. Or he's win one as a prize. Now I could have taken them off him, but by that time my son had a huge water blaster at home, not to mention a light sabre, a sword, a robin hood bow and arrow set, darts and a darts board and a collection of star wars and beast wars toys. Oh and space ships armed with guns, pirate ships armed with cannons etc etc. It seemed to me pointless in taking the toy gun away. Compared to the water blaster, in particular, it looked ineffectual and well, a bit pathetic. How could I explain to my son that this cheap little gun was wrong without also taking away his mega powered water blaster and the rest? And what about the halloween accessories he had collected, the vampire teeth, claw hands, the frighening masks (like guns these have little postive connotation either). A lot of the above I would also not allow my son to take out in public either, btw. It's not just a toy gun thing. Put one water blaster or one light sabre amongst several children and everything ends in tears, ime, unless the children are all very good at sharing.

So I decided to let him have guns he acquired, but he knew I would watch how he used them. I don't think it affected his attitude to fantasy or violence, or his behaviour, and he didn't get obsessed with his toy guns. He knows I still wouldn't buy him a gun as a present or that I will ever like them. But guns are not one of his favourite toys, and, as I said in another message ime gun play is a passing phase.

I think you can ban toy guns and good luck if you do this, but I think you also have to be ready with an answer to the question, 'but what about my waterblaster/sword/starwars x-wing fighter?' And also give careful thinking to whether you ban all point and shoot type toys.

Tigermoth, I share your unease. And where do you draw the line on snowballs? Does agreeing that throwing a snowball is OK mean that you are tacitly saying it is OK to throw sand, or stones? To me a snowball is not the same as a stone in the same way that a toy gun is not the same thing as a real gun. The intention is what matters. This is not an easy black and white issue IMHO.

There are other toys I would not buy my children because I feel they are unsuitable or I cannot afford them, or I feel they have had enough for the moment. Saying no at times is a necessity. I personally do not feel that I am doing my DS1 (DS2 too young to care at the moment) any damage by saying 'you cannot have that gun' anymore than 'you cannot have that Thomas the Tank train set' or 'you cannot have all the Fimbles stuff' because we have already done Teletubbies and Tweenies and I am not starting on Fimbles. Personally I would include Light Sabres, swords etc and also I am very careful that he does not see violent cartoons etc. However he does have Disneys Tarzan and has played at being Clayton with his big gun, he was just mildly distracted from this game. Perhaps I am fortunate in that most of my friends have similar views and there are no issues with other children bringing toy guns to the house.

Bossykate I think I was trying to say that the environment we bring our children up in has more impact on them than the toys we let them play with. But that point has been put much better recently than I could do!

I don't think I would 'ban' any toy. There are loads of toys I find distasteful (the doll with the penis, dolls that poo, barbies, any Tellytubby or Tweenie or other tv character, make-up aimed at toddlers, etc) but I wouldn't stop dd from gaining access to them, or people from buying them for her. I trust that we would do an adequate job of bringing her up that she would develop into a reasonable child no matter what toys or media images she were given. Children's imaginations can often be very violent and scary (pretending their guts are hanging out or their heads have been lopped off - monsters under the bed, etc) but I think that's fairly normal child development which will happen whether you allow them to have guns or not.

Only just come into this thread. When DS 1 was about 2 Sainsbury's were stocking action men wearing just swimming trunks. (You know all muscley torso etc) DS1 spotted it and immediately said 'Daddy" (in my dreams!!). I laughed so hard I had to buy it. He still calls his action man "daddy" (he;s 3 and a half now) and it makes me laugh every time. In fact today he found it and came into the kitchen saying "daddy, daddy" poking his nipples saying 'button button'. I did throw away the gun as I thought it was a choke hazard.

cor blimey...this thread... those were the days!!! stumbled on this thread as was searching under 'cap gun' as ds (aged 5 ) has just been bought one by a friend of mine's son!!!

he loves it.

i remember loving my two cowgirl ones as a kid (bought them in spain, home of the cap gun!).

is it anathema?

i've just got a cap gun for mine as well, not like they used to be though are they. still smell lovely mmm