Do your kids play "guns?"

[Topgun]

WE sure did. We even used WWII "bring-backs." Ran all over the place playing "war." I had a Japanese 6.5 carbine with no bolt and a napalmed stock. We had a ball.

I have been John Wayne, Gene Autry, Cisco Kid, Sgt. Preston, Red Ryder, Randolph Scott, Richard Widmark and many others. (never did like Lone Ranger for some reason)

The last kid I saw playing cowboys was in rural Sonora, CA in 1984.

Would your kid even WANT to have a toy gun?

Ladies, what's YOUR opinion on letting the kids play with toy guns?

(or perhaps....what is your non gun enthusiast NEIGHBOR lady's opinion of toy guns?)

 

[C.R.Sam]

Yep.
All my kids play guns.
Youngest played with em on 5 hot deployments before retiring from the Army.

Sam

 

[Kreed]

You betcha

My two-year old daughter and my five-year old son chase each other all over the house with their Nerf blaster, "ray gun" toys.

 

[aerod1]

My grandson is too small to play with toy guns. He is only 9 months old .....but he already has a toy AK-47 and AR-15. When he gets strong enough to pick one up, he will be allowed to play with them. When he is older he will be allowed to play with real guns (with proper instruction and supervision of course).

Jim Hall

 

[BerettaNut92]

No kids for me, but if I did, I would, but dammit, I'm going to teach them correct tactics!

My parents were on-off with the gun thing. Since toy guns were banned from the house, I made one out of Construx or something like that.

When guns are outlawed...only outlaws will have guns.

 

[Topgun]

Skunkabilly

Maybe you cudda carved one from soap an made a break.

 

[Ukraine Train]

I had them. I remember, though, going to a friend's house who's mom didn't let him play with guns (or even watch tv!) so we made guns out of those oversized lego blocks hehe.

 

[Smoke]

Two kids here.

I made no effort to influence the kid's like or dislike of guns. He was pretending to have guns from an early age. His grandmother bought him one of those old fashioned cap pistols. He had strict instructions not to point it at people or pets. Other things were fair game for pretending.

HE now has an airsoft. He only gets loads with me there and very carefully set up targets. HE must demonstrate safe handling prior to getting to shoot "real" bullets. (he can play with the airsoft but if he points it at an "off-limits" target it is put away)

We'll se how the girl turns out...she's only 9 months old.

 

[Gus Dddysgrl]

No kids here, but I'll buy them toy guns when they come. They will be taught how to properly use them and what can and can't be shot. I hope to live where the neighbor lady will let her kids play with my kids and they can play with toys guns together. Then when they get older they can all go to the range together, but that's VERY far down the road.

I also plan on playing with airsofts in the house with my fiancee. He already has no problem shooting me with it.

Me-I used to play war with the boys in my class. I spent more time at the boys houses than I did at the girls. I even spent the night at more guys houses than I did at girls houses. We played with mostly wooden guns cause we didn't have plastic ones, and daddy made the wooden ones. At their houses we would wage war on whatever we could find and run around like crazy making lots of noise. If there was enough of us we split into teams and played against each other. When at school we just used our fingers and pretended we were holding guns. Strategy was the main point, so no one won, but it was fun. I want my kids to enjoy what I did as a kid.

Gus

 

[El Tejon]

Reports here at the Fashionable Bachelor Pad indicate that mis sobrinos are "shooting" with their fingers, toys from Sunday School, sticks in the yard, anything handy even though they are too young as of yet to receive shooting lessons. It will not be long (and I know so little).

 

[larryw]

Not since my son (almost 8) started shooting a real gun; somehow the fun vanished as he learned what guns are really capable of. That doesn't bother me in the least.

He does make a point fo stating when playing with squirt guns that they're "water toys, not guns". Its fun to watch him stalk the neighbor kids during these battles with his finger off the trigger and the muzzle pointed in a safe direction.

 

[Martin2]

Play guns?

Excellent reading.

My kids and my grandkids, (10, 7, 4), are all acquainted with firearms, the noise, the smoke, the cameraderie, the experience is never a waste of time.

It's never too soon to take 'em down the range.

Playing with the toys is OK for the under fives but they must learn early on, it's a tool, not a toy. Real life is not the movies.

Martin2

 

[Fudgie Ghost]

These days, where I live, hell, my kids, (when they were young enough) would have been practically arrested.

When I was young kid (mid-sixties), we played war ALL DAY, on some Saturdays. We played WAR all the time. One time we made a little "village" of "hootches", and would attack with "dirt bombs" and mud balls. Had a toy Winchester lever action, Mattel Thompson (painted camo no less!), some Wham-O! thing that made sparks when you pulled the trigger. And then, yeah, some kid gave me an old Japanese rifle (w/no bolt). I was so proud of that, I took a break from "fighting" and came into to show it to my parents----they thought it was still "shootable" and almost had a cow. We'd have one group go out on "patrol", and the other would lie in wait and ambush them. "Count to 100" and get back up. I was into dying spectacularly--falling, rolling--it was great.

Man, I just thank God I grew up at that time, and have those great memories. What a shame that whole generations of kids will not have a chance. Besides, it got you outside, running, yelling, planning ambushes. Now it's all on the Xbox or computer.

Oh, and you know what? None of us grew up to be pyshos or bank robbers, or mass murderers. Imagine that. Look at all that's come and gone.

 

[Rogelio]

No kids yet, but I remember my mom would not allow me to play "war" (hehe, that's why I am closer to dad).

Bought my first handgun (Used brescia 7.65mm -32 acp-) as soon as I turned 18..I still keep and fire that beautifull gift

 

[FireInTheHole]

I was never allowed to 'play' with firearms growing up. Letting your children play with a toy gun is inviting trouble in the future when they get their hands on a real gun. What is to prevent them from 'playing' with your firearms when you arent around!!

When I have children, they will be taught from the start that a gun can kill somebody. And I will make damned sure they understand what that means.

 

[spacemanspiff]

thankfully i have not hatched any demonspawn of my own, but i do have nieces and nephews. my brother wont let his kids play with toy guns, but he does let them play Halo on xbox. doesnt make much sense, but oh well...
we let his kids shoot my pellet gun, his daughter wasnt all that enthused, but she doesnt like anything. his son had more fun with it and was proud to have hit the water bottle hanging on a string at 20 yards.
i think my brother will let his kids get to be quite a bit older before he introduces them to shooting. heck, he still has a lot to learn himself.

 

[Standing Wolf]

I did as a boy. If I'd had children, they wouldn't have had toy guns. They'd have grown up shooting real guns.

 

[gun-fucious]

my two girls aged 5 & 7
have absolutely no interest in playing "guns"

playing Hamtaros?
playing Powerpuff Girls?
playing kitties?

try and stop them

In their world
bad things are overcome with tongue waggling

 

[Penforhire]

My girlfriend tried to ban toy guns from her son when he was young. She gave up after he chewed a piece of toast into a gun-shape and went bang-bang with it. I asked her about it and she said she had no specific reason to hate guns, no personal trauma or family member suicide, just that she did (bear in mind she got her college degree in social work, I didn't know you could get a degree in how to be a liberal...).

I have since turned her to the dark side, with a well timed Pistol class given by a patient professional. She shoots with me now and I've taken her son skeet shooting too, although as a college slacker his muzzle control isn't all it could be.

I remember when I was a kid we had VERY realistic toy rifles and handguns. None of this glowing tip spaceship-shaped nonsense. Hmm, maybe we're tracking the RKBA fight here...

 

[synoptic]

I had them when I was a kid (still am) and yet still had the utmost respect for real firearms. All my friends had them too, of course I lived on military installations most of my younger life. Kids aren't as stupid as many think, they can differentiate between real guns and toys, it is just up to the parents to make sure they make that distinction. In fact, I believe toy guns can actually HELP a child learn to be careful around guns, the concept of "I shoot you with a fake bullet, you are fake dead" can translate into "real bullet, real dead". When I have kids they will have toy guns and hopefully will have friends who have them as well.

 

[Norwegian]

I used to " play " guns alot as a child , I still have some of my toy-weapons
stucked away somewhere .

At the most I`m quite sure I had 50-60 of them

 

[Holly76201]

When I was a little girl, my big brother split my scalp open with a cap pistol that he "said" just fell. But we still played war, cops and robbers, and Cowboys and Indians, with me always being the indian, the robber, or the loser in whatever war game it was.
My own children are now grown, but they played similar games. And my son{21 now} has a scar on his forehead that looks like an early wrinkle from another toy gun, required 4 stitches, IIRC.
But I still let them play with all manner of toy guns.
When they got old enough, around age 10, they started getting their own real guns and safety lessons, but they still liked playing with the toys. They just knew the difference between the damage a toy could do and the damage a REAL gun could do.

 

[pax]

Complex question.

Four or five years ago, my then-six-year-old son David was playing a video game at the pizza parlor when his grandfather walked up. Grandfather was horrified at the violent game the kid was playing, and said as much.

"David, we don't like that kind of game," Grandpa told him. "You're shooting people!"

David finished what he was doing and then turned around. "Well," he said, "you don't like that kind of game, but I do. And I'm not really shooting people, Grandpa. It's only pretend..." (Typed on screen it sounds disrespectful, but the kid's voice wasn't disrespectful at all. He was just esplainin' to his grandpa.)

Upshot of that little story is that I've never been one of those people who thinks kids have a problem telling fantasy from reality. I think that difficulty distinguishing between the two is a uniquely adult problem.

Which brings me right to the center of the question at hand. I don't mind my kids having toy guns or playing with them, but I hate the thought of them getting arrested, shot, or merely kicked out of some activity because the adults around them are too stupid to tell a game from reality and too stubborn to admit that a toy gun is not the same as the real thing.

Which means that, around here, I let my kids play guns -- but they have to stay out of sight of the road, they aren't allowed to point guns at any human being or pet animal, and they aren't allowed to play guns with anyone I haven't approved.

Stinks, but there it is.

pax

Grown-ups never understand anything on their own, and it's tiresome for children for ever and ever to be giving them explanations. -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

 

[jsalcedo]

I let my kid play toy guns in the house but usually he is dressed up in
his motley array of camo and toy/real equipment and the guns are
part of the costume.

I don't let him play in the neighborhood with toy guns (only squirt guns)
for safety reasons, although he usually finds something to make a gun out of.

 

[Holly76201]

Not ALL Social Workers are "liberals"

not that liberal is necessarily a dirty word, T.Jefferson was a liberal after all.
Penforhire has said above thet his GF has a degree in SW and he commented he didn't know you could learn how to be a liberal.
Well I am both a SW AND a shooting enthusist.
When I was a Parole Officer I had a pic on my bulletin boad behind my desk of me shooting BF's Thompson, w/drum magazine,cartridge casings arcing thru the air. One day, an ATF agent was investigating one of my miscreants and he came to my office to get some info. He looked at the pic and then at me and said, "So, you're a gun nut" And I looked him calmly in the eye for a moment and then replied, firmly, "No, I'm a 2nd amendment rights activist." He made no further comments about my activities.