Toy guns. Would you allow them in your house?

[spidermama]

My DH and his two brothers were not allowed guns in the house. So desperate were they to play gun games that they used to bite their toast into gun shapes and use them.

Yes dinasour those CAPS are the ones I mean

On a paper roll with spots on

That go bang in the cap gun

Also gun crime and gun culture is hugely on the increase. In 'our day' when none of us ending up gun toting assasins this was not the case. I wonder how many little girls play with guns all the time and how this correlates to the number of female gun-related attacks?

Tigermoth - I would be HUGELY offended and upset if my little ones ended up playing with your son and his guns in the park and I am sure that, unbeknown to you, some parents have been and whilst your nose was buried in a book - ushered their child away....

How many female gun attackers are there in the Uk? I don't think I have ever heard of one - or the evidence that it was because she played with toy guns as a child, rather than say poverty, a screwed up childhood, drugs etc.

Plus, I wouldn't take any toy guns to the park cos the little sods round here would nick them! Came back from park with half the number of buckets and spades the other day. Grrr - I bet those kids will go on to spade their parents to death and I will get the blame!

I dont doubt that their are multiple causitive factors in an individual becoming a' gun- user' Personally, as well as ensuring the happy safe non- abusive childhood ( for my boys and girls) as best i can ,I will prevent them acting out a massacre and beating sh*t out of one another

Good for you.

oops guess dd is going to end up as some kinda axe toting loony then as shes had a toy axe since she was 6 mnths. lol Cant see it somehow at all.

In fact watching and listening to the children playing at the re-enactments that we go to they are very aware of how to 'play' properly with their 'weapons' and will soon tell off any child who hurts another or plays roughly.

Is that the homemade soft axe, tarantula?

Surely though if you are sensible and don't make a big thing about guns/swords/lightsabers/water pistols

The children don't crave them

We had CAP guns as children and bows and arrows and I think we turned out OK

Surely all these people who ban them say they make them out of lego, sticks, toast or even just their fingers

So surely is it just part of play.

I mean you could say ban cars and trains cos then when children play with them and make them go too fast or make them crash that that is teaching them bad behaviour and that they will end up being joy riders

thats the one soupy.

Never fails to being a smile to my face Fantastic!

mine has a BB gun, but he has a sticky target in his bedroom, and is NOT allowed to show his friends. He also has Tin Can Alley (light beam shoots cans off wall), Super Soakers, light saber, DH's old cap guns etc.

He has even shot apples in the garden under close supervision of DH with an air -rifle (we have a very long garden, all cats locked away, wearing goggles, no - I'm not Lav etc etc)

Jsut had a intesting thougth Dss came over to ours last year saying that he had to make and bring to school a piece of a Roman legionaires kit. Now as the legionaires were soldiers what would you do about making a piece of their kit if you are anti weaponry/war etc? Just curious as to how we should approach these things once kids get to school and start studying history as almost all of the KS2 history is based on the bloodiest parts of our history.

milliways - my ds2 has one of those tin can alley things as well.

ds2 (3.10) is very into weapons- swords, guns, sticks, action man. ds1 (6) couldn't care less- cars are his only love

I had toy guns as a child, including cap guns (I had older brothers) and we also had a real air rifle with which we shot tin cans and paper targets (but never pheasants!) and do you know what? Neither I nor my brothers have grown into gun toting maniacs running riot with machine guns through the local town centre. My brothers also did shooting with "proper" guns as part of the Air Training Corps.

Claiming that children having toy guns makes them violent gun wielding maniacs is complete and utter b*llocks with no basis in fact whatsoever. Give them some credit for common sense and yourself for good parenting! It's parenting and circumstances that cause violent children, not plastic weapons.

Air rifles I think should DEFFO NOT be used near anything living

My ds is 3 and he has 1 gun which is his prized possession. He also drools over his older cousins swords and light sabres so I'm sure it's only a matter time before we have an arsenal of weapons. Long before we bought him his gun he made toast/lego guns and generally pointed things whilst shouting FIRE FIRE BANG BANG.

I am not in the least concerned that this will have any negative effects on how he turns out.

Absolutely not, RTKM. We were taught safety^ when we used ours.

I think all of us would have been mortified had we shot anything living.

I remember as a kid making pen knives out of lolly sticks, any one else do this?

Also what if your DD or DS want to take up fencing as a hobby????

After foil there is EPEE and SABER and these are very very large swords like in "three musketeers"

What then???

Girls and boys do fencing from age 7 years

No Dinosaur! WE used to rub the end on the ground on both sides - this makes a very sharp point.

all of my 3 - all boys - have toy guns, swords, etc, but iIve drawn the line at a BB gun, much to the disgust of my eldest