Kids and guns
Remember, I do this to entertain me, not you.
Uncle Pays the Bills
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April 23rd, 2009 at 10:43 am
Thanks for the link, Uncle!
April 23rd, 2009 at 11:01 am
I have liked the series so far, but have to break contact with the “no toy gun” rule. Even my 5 year old daughter knows the difference between toy guns and real guns. She, like my two older boys also know the 4 rules of gun safety and know exactly what to do if they encounter a real gun at a friends house. (1) leave the room, (2) tell an adult.
If we extend the “no toy gun” rule, then we shouldn’t have toy cars either. My kids wreck theirs all the time.
April 23rd, 2009 at 12:54 pm
When I was growing up, in the early 1960s, I saw Lawrence of Arabia blow up trains, massacre Turks, personally shoot misbehaving fellow tribesmen, and get tortured. I saw John Wayne killing Nips, Nazis and Injuns with everything from six-shooters to fighter planes. I spent Saturday afternoons watching monsters being dispatched by citizens and armies with everything from wooden stakes to nukes. I recreated as many of these events as I could with my brothers and the kids in our neighborhood.
The difference in entertainment today is that predatory violence is often glorified, rather than the protective violence of my youthful big screen and small screen entertainment.
Teach your kids the difference in the types of violence and you will have armed them mentally against much that is dysfunctional in today’s society, as well as making them safe for playing cops and robbers, cowboys and indians, martians and earthlings, and all the other normal games of childhood. One purpose of those games is to allow the kids to distinguish between antisocial evildoers and the protectors of society.
Teach them, then watch them play with toy guns or anything else. I bet they will choose to defend society rather than destroy it, until forced to switch sides when the bad guys want their turn at being the good guys.
April 23rd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Teaching her child about safety with real firearms is a plus. Too bad she’s banning fake guns and other things from him cause now he’s gonna be gay.
April 24th, 2009 at 12:15 am
Well now AT, do you mean real gay, or “play gay”? Heh.
Seems odd that there was a major disagreement over there, and neither side called the other wrong, let alone any names. Gun-nut courtesy? I’m not taking sides.
I don’t like paintball, just on the general instructor’s prejudice about pointing a “weapon” at another person, and no I don’t say the ‘W’ word during a course. But it’s hard to play war without having any shooting, and playing at war is how you begin to understand strategy and tactics–logistics too, if the whole neighborhood plays. I don’t really care for snowball fights either–but “I understand.”
When my kid (who understood guns) started to get into wide ranging play-fights with the other kids, I got some venerable old toy rifles from the family collection (the oldest was my grandfather’s), took apart some cheap junk toy binoculars, and, using shiny black gunsmithing tape, precisely mounted “telescopic sights” on them. Then I sat back and watched.
Sure enough, within a couple of “play sessions” (we had another word for it in my youth), there was no more face-to-face bang-bang skirmishing. Combat was taking place from cover, with maneuver and enfilade. Ambushes were accomplished by wrestling and plastic bayonet. When I asked the children why they weren’t clubbing and shooting point-blank with their guns, the answer was “You gotta aim. That’s the cool part.”
I haven’t kept track of every single one of those kids, but one’s a machinist, one’s a Marine, one’s on an athletic ride to a major state college, and the one I had the privilege of actually coaching in rifle is a cadet at a military academy, and wears the Expert badge. I never said shit to that gang. All I did was tape the sights on. Somehow, that changed the game.