Are Toy Cowboy Guns Passe or Just Politicaly Incorrect

[JBP]

My wife is in a community theatre group that is rehearsing for a Broadway review and has a solo of "You Can't Get a Man With a Gun" from the show Annie Get Your Gun. The director wants her to use a rifle as a prop during her number. My 1894 Marlin 44 Mag would fit the period but I'm not keen on the idea of having my rifle be someplace where I'm not so after my range session this morning we went first to Toys R' Us. There we were told they don't carry cowboy style guns anymore. Laser guns yes, cowboy guns no . Then we went to the local Wal Mart. Nothing in the toy department either. I went over to sporting goods and there were a couple of Daisy BB gun models. I bought the Red Ryder model, something I've always wanted since I was a kid (a real long time ago). Now my wife has her prop and I have a new toy. Guess I'll just set up a range in the garage.

 

[jamz]

Huh, I was in a Kay-Bee toy and hobby in a mall (In Massachusetts! ) and they had toy pistols, both cowboy-type revolvers and autoloaders (in which the slide actually moved when you pulled the trigger, but it moved inthe wrong direction).

It had a lever action rifle too. Problem was, all the rifles were, as you'd expect in a toy store, a little on the small side.

-James

 

[ChickenHawk]

What a shame.

We played tons of Cops and Robbers, Cowboys and Indians, and War when I was a kid. I am 47 now.

It was GREAT fun. It kept us busy outside running around (yes, we had TV then but didn't sit in front of it all day).

As far as I know, none of my friends have grown up to become mass murderers or postal workers (if you work for USPS that was a joke - relax).

Political Correctness has turned those games into things parents won't let their kids do any more. I worry that the antis are winning on these fronts, but stuff like paintball and airsoft may be taking up the slack, and these with older, more mature people.

It's still worrisome, though.

ChickenHawk

 

[DMK]

I think it's just that kids don't want to run around outside with cap guns anymore. They'd rather play shoot'em ups on the Xbox while munching on Cheeze Doodles.

The toy stores don't carry toy guns due to basic economics.

 

[Nightcrawler]

Some places sell prop leverguns and single action revolvers. Actions work and everything (though heavy dry firing can hurt them).

 

[Lone_Gunman]

I would not let someone use one of my guns in a theatrical performance. If the gun is out of your control, and someone does something stupid, I would be afraid I'd get my butt sued off.

 

[7.62FullMetalJacket]

The reason you can find no toy guns in MD is because they banned 'em when you were not lookin'

Sorry, could not resist.

Remember Gents, when most of us were impressionable, we had Western heroes. Ergo, levers and single action toys. Now all of the kids are ninjas or from the Matrix. Ergo airsoft. And, of course, Nintendo

 

[Lord Bodak]

I haven't seen a cap gun in YEARS. Too bad too, they were always fun. My roommate and I were amazed how hard it was to find just plain old cheap dart guns... the ones that shoot the soft orange darts, ya know? All that's around anymore is the expensive Nerf stuff.

 

[CleverNickname]

This might be out of the price range of a community theater-type production, but you could get a blank-firing replica.

 

[Mulliga]

My local Wally World still has cap guns and the like (even a lever action faux rifle). They look pretty darn realistic if you paint them black and/or remove the orange tips (not recommended). Maybe it's all you Northerners .

 

[jsalcedo]

When I buy toy guns I paint the red and blue ones black and remove the dumb red thing on the end of the barrel.

Those are the ones my son and I practice gun safety with and use to shoot
rubber darts at the TV. Those guns stay inside.

When he goes outside to play cops and robbers he gets the neon one
so the sheeple don't have a coniption.

I found the dollar stores have good collections of black and silver toy guns.

 

[pax]

Our local WalMart carries plenty of toy guns, and also carries both cowboy-type gun play sets and S.W.A.T.-type sets. They've also got cap guns, as do the local convenience and variety stores.

I suspect it's yet another rural vs. urban thang.

pax

 

[sm]

Must be a MD , or as pax suggested rural vs urban thang.
We have them here in AR in various stores.

I took my nephew to the Children' s Theatre, ...boy the folks jumped and yelped at the sound of gunfire and smoke during the playSwiss Family Robinson .

I like live theatre, yep we have prop guns, swords, knives...real handcuffs as well. Kinda funny but one of the actors during a play forget his key...about 3 handcuff keys were tossed on stage. Talk about audience participation.

 

[Azrael256]

I wore out a pair of cowboy-style pistols that used those paper strip caps, a 12-shot "detective special" that used those little ring caps, and one of those Red Ryder popgun lever-action things that looks just like the Daisy BB gun. I also seem to recall having a lever-action rifle that shot little cork balls, and that one had a neato "scope" on it.

Haven't seen anything like them in stores in recent memory.

 

[mr_dove]

There's some frowning on toy guns even in the Pro-Gun community stemming from a desire NOT to teach children that guns are toys. Many (including me) feel that toy guns instill unsafe safety practices from a young age.

I guess we don't want to teach our kids that its EVER safe to point a gun at a person. Maybe we think that these toy gun behaviors will carry over when we introduce the real guns.

Many of us feel that it is much better to introduce REAL guns at a younger age. My son is only 2 now but he will have a BB gun by the time he is 3 or 4 and his first 22 once he masters the basic safety principles.

 

[cratz2]

Well, there are two girls and one boy in my... former household. All three kids have been exposed to real guns and allowed to look at them and have watched me strip and clean them. With the older girl, I've been going over the different parts and what they do and how the gun works in general. In time, I will show them (at least the girls) what guns do to living animals.

Having said that, I do not like the idea of toy guns. I had several of them as a child (I'm 30 now) and had one incident where a real gun was pointed at me while I was instructed to throw my not so real gun on the ground. This was in Houston Texas in about 1983 or 1984.

A couple months ago, my youngest daughter was pointing at someone (I forget who at this moment) pointing her fingers like a gun, going 'Pew pew. I kill you.' I was not happy. Evidently, she was allowed to play with toy guns at her previous daycare. The husband of the provider is a gun owner, seemingly responsible and they have six sons! Anyway, she no longer goes there and purely in my opinion, I would rather be in complete control over my kids access to guns - both toy and real - and training them not to point and shoot at other kids and family members.

I do not consider my political leanings to be liberal by any means, but if this belief makes me liberal, so be it. I don't like my kids playing with toy guns and if I owned a toy store, I wouldn't sell toy guns there either.

 

[TallPine]

The hardware store that I used to work at had cap gun revolvers, and you could even get speedloader stlye caps to put in them. One guy and his wife bought one to start training their horses to gunfire for cowboy action sports.

One of the cutest things that I have seen was our neighbor Arab doctor's little boy riding his bike in the street with a wild west holster and toy silver sixgun. I guess there was no problem with assimilation there, huh?

Oh, and I think most kids grow up and learn to differentiate fantasy from reality.

 

[benEzra]

There's some frowning on toy guns even in the Pro-Gun community stemming from a desire NOT to teach children that guns are toys. Many (including me) feel that toy guns instill unsafe safety practices from a young age.

Then there's the position (to which I hold) that if you make the child obey the Four Rules and treat it as if it's real, it can be an excellent safety training tool. Allows you to teach indoors with a backstop suitable for a rubber dart.

 

[VNgo]

Many of us feel that it is much better to introduce REAL guns at a younger age. My son is only 2 now but he will have a BB gun by the time he is 3 or 4 and his first 22 once he masters the basic safety principles.

I wish my parents thought like you. They're not antis per se, but they don't like guns and strongly dislike the fact that I do.

 

[LawDog]

During the fifties and sixties darn near every boy-child in America had a toy six-shooter and acted out the shootouts he saw on every night on TV with his friends.

Did those toy gun behaviors carry over during introductions to real guns? In other words, was there a mass number of gun-shot wounds during the fifties and early sixties?

During the seventies, my friends and I had daily war game shoot-outs with our plastic Tommy guns, plastic Sterlings, plastic M16's (is that redundant, or what?), plastic .45s and what have you.

Neither I, nor any of my childhood companions have, to the best of my knowledge, unintentionally shot anyone for any reason, much less because our toy gun behaviors carried over to real guns.

Maybe we were unique or something.

LawDog

 

[cordex]

My parents thought much along the lines of Cratz2. I never had toy guns as a kid. My first guns were a pair of pump-action BB rifles that I got as a reward for A's in second(?) grade. Whenever I wanted to play with toy guns, I'd run into the woods, find a good looking branch, chop extra (read: non pistol-grip or magazine stand-ins) bits off and I had my rifle/shotgun/subgun/pistol/bazooka or whatever weapon I wanted to play with.

 

[Brian Dale]

Lawdog,

Neither I, nor any of my childhood companions have, to the best of my knowledge, unintentionally shot anyone for any reason, ... Maybe we were unique or something.

Same here. Millions of us were unique that way (IOW, I agree with your point). Our dads made it very plain, in no uncertain terms, that real guns were a whole different item than the toy guns we had and played with incessantly. They also introduced us to shooting real guns under close supervision from about the age of five. To grow up with access to both could have been part of the reason we never mistook one for the other.

Lone_Gunman,

I would not let someone use one of my guns in a theatrical performance.

Neither would I, unless they were gun people — for a different reason. BTDT, with an original 1873 Winchester of my Dad's when I was in high school back in the '70s. The fellow who carried it in the play once thumped the butt on the stage to emphasize the line he was speaking. No damage; it just gave me the creeps to see him treating a valuable old rifle that way. I caught him backstage and gave him a stern lecture, and he treated it with care after that. Not worth the risk of damage to lend a weapon to someone who doesn't know how to take care of it.

I'm sure that your wife knows better, but she's not the only person present backstage. A former girlfriend's brother is a fantastic opera tenor. Some of the people that he worked with when I knew him were real goobers.

{EDIT: I do know how to spell, but my typing could use some improvement}

 

[hops]

I can relate to Lawdog on this one, although I had my first toy six shooters in Germany - late 60's.

When I lived in MO, we (my first american friends, whose dad reativated de-wats, he was a hobby type gunsmith as I recall) played army, but we had a huge open woods area behind us. When I moved to CA a few years later, it was different. In HS, when I had my DL, we'd (the HS ROTC types - friends, since I was not in ROTC) drive to Fort Funston, just South of S.F. on the coast. Or, we'd pile in my wagon and head for the hills where we lived (15 miles by car) and play there (all developed now). That was fun and great way to keep in shape.

Some other guys in HS had BB gun wars, until some kid almost lost one eye. Morons. We, that knew guns, seemed smart enough to not do that non-sense - fired my first rifle at 10, so step-dad made damm sure I understood the difference from a real gun (anything that emits a projectile that can cause damage) and a fake gun (only emits noise at best).

With the increasing urbanization, I just see less and less places to play army or cowboys & indians. Then there is that whole anti-gun B.S. and P.C. B.S.

 

[BHPshooter]

My brother's birthday was about a month ago. We went into the Toys R Us to get him a toy lever-action rifle, and they said it was against their policy to carry even vaguely realistic-looking toy guns.

What is the world coming to?

Wes

 

[jsalcedo]

Disney world in Orlando still sells the toy flintlock pistols and muskets.
They are made out of real wood and metal.

I was very surprised when I saw little kids carrying them around the park.

I thought disney would have pulled toy guns a lon time ago.