Toy gun, viewed innocently or not !

MissAdventure

Do nobody's grandchildren have Nerf guns?
I'd be amazed if not.

Nope! Nothing at ALL that looks/sounds/acts/smells even like a weapon! Pop gun? NOPE and I don't know any of my extended circle of kids of friends and family that would even consider them! I think it depends on how naïve the adults are?

Oh dear! Do people still buy guns for children? Mine NEVER had any type of weaponry , I'd be trying to get the thing away from him and in nearest bin!

tidyskatemum

I have fond memories of my silver cap gun when I was little - and my Davy Crockett hat! I was not a girly girl……

me too. I had a COWBOY outfit, was insistent that I didn't want a cowgirl outfit.

I remember my parents having this discussion.

My mother would happily have forbidden us to play "cowboys and indians" and have cowboy hats, guns gun-holsters, feather headresses and tomahawks.

My father said that she could forbid it as much as she liked, but that we would continue to play, using our fingers or sticks instead of a toy gun or tomahawk. He explained to us that it was all right to play games like these because they were only pretend, but that in real life if you shot someone that person might very well die.

He forbade bows and arrows, slingshots and catapults, because with any of these you could kill someone.

A child of five has got to the stage of trying to assimilate what death actually is. Playing cops and robbers, hospitals, Robin Hood and so on is part of this process.

This doesn't mean that I think children should be allowed to take toy pistols out shopping with them and run around "shooting people", but playing at home with these toys, can and should be a way of tackling the difficult subjects of death, injury, war and terrorism. We can't protect children entirely from hearing about all this, after all, so we need to find a way of answering their questions about them.

I never allowed my son a gun to play with even though playing cowboys and having a cap gun was commonplace when I was young.
Maybe if it makes you feel uncomfortable, you request that his parents don't send the gun with him in future or he understnds that he can't take it with him when you go out.

I was a Davy Crockett, Lone Ranger etc but Ma would never have let me take any of that stuff into a shop. Just not how to behave.

Oh you were right to worry - in the back garden 'maybe' but in a public place!!!!! Never. Improvising etc is very different and will not result in a realistic gun that truly could alarm people. Also that's teaching an active and inventive approach to life.

A number of years ago , just after Christmas, a young boy, about 6 or 7 years old ,stood in my shop doorway with a toy gun and said ever so politely "Would you all put you hands up Please"
His mother was mortified. Fortunately all my customers were amused.

Theoddbird

I didn't let my children have toy guns. I think they are very wrong. A child had no way of knowing what a real one does. They should be banned from sale..

If you read the thread, you'll see that many children who weren't allowed toy guns simply improvised and made their own - whether it was from sticks, bricks or whatever.

my children never had guns…. my grandson doesn't have them …but he now makes them with lego! … my daughters not impressed and hope he will grow out of it.

I was determined my sons wouldn’t have toy guns, even though they asked for them. So they just made their own with Lego bricks! For what it’s worth I think we tend to overreact to toy guns, because they’re pretty harmless compared to the console games children play.

My brother and I were playing cowboys with toy guns on the roof of an enclosed passage at the rear of our large family home. Unbeknown to us , someone alerted the authorities and, what I can only describe as a SWAT team turned up to escort us down. Of course, everyone saw the ‘funny’ side of this at the time but I have since thought that it could have ended in tragedy. Some toy guns look frighteningly like real weapons, as ours did, and certainly shouldn’t be bought for children.

I didn't let my children have toy guns. I think they are very wrong. A child had no way of knowing what a real one does. They should be banned from sale..

I well remember in the mid-1970's flying from Dallas to L.A. with our 4 year old son who was Cowboy and Indian mad and so wearing his cowboy hat and plastic gun. As we were checking in, two security policeman came and asked him what he was doing with that firearm. I explained it was a toy gun. They promptly confiscated it, put it in a sealed packet and it was sent to the cockpit in the care of the pilot. After filling in several forms, we were given it back after landing. Those were the days!!!!

My mum worked in a playgroup during the troubles here in Northern Ireland. Toys guns were not allowed. However the little boys would bite their toast to the shape of a gun and have a gun battle!

tidyskatemum

I have fond memories of my silver cap gun when I was little - and my Davy Crockett hat! I was not a girly girl……

I had the Davy Crocket book it turned up in my mothers when we cleared out.
DH says he had the full gear and once went in the local carnival as Tonto all cocoaed up by his mum, that would be frowned on these days as well .
Attitudes have changed and we all see how toys might affect people in later life. I can remember going to a seaside town when young and there were shops full of Flick Knives but all the boys I knew didn't turn to knife crime like a lot are these days.
Were we the heritage of relations who had been in both World wars and knew by just listening of the horrors of weapons? Yet that generation let their children have the Davey Crocket hat and watch 'The Alamo", a lot of TV programmes were Cowboys and Indians.

When we were children there were cowboy adventures in comics, and on TV. People were shot, fell off horses etc. and there was no blood shown. As a small girl I had a cap gun which made a noise and smelled of gunpowder - mostly to keep up with the boys that I played with. This innocent fun moved out of our lives as we grew up, but we have today a truly awful situation where there is a knife and gun culture, and 'Bang bang you're dead' has ceased to be a game. That's no doubt why we now feel uncomfortable .

Heroes with super powers are more popular now!

When my children were very small, someone gave the two-year-old a toy pistol. Imagine my horror when the baby - 11 months - came crawling into the kitchen and aimed a gun at me, saying 'nang, nang' almost his first words. Fortunately the two boys, now 50 and 48 have grown up with a healthy abhorrence of guns and other violence, though DGS, 16, is considering joining the Army. I shudder!

When my children were small (late 90s early 00s) I was quite surprised that OH was vehemently against them having toy guns (he’d been in the TA for years & had an air pistol and air rifle himself). Wooden or stick swords were ok, but he did tell them that they should never be used at head level!
Roll on 15/20 years and I’m horrified at the zombie/nazi shooting games OH plays on the PS4 with graphic visual effects. Fortunately DS didn’t like these kind of computer games, and only tried them a few times before moving on.
Some of these computer games are so violent and dismissive of life - and plenty of children not only have access to them but use them for hours

I'm of an age where they were a normal part of growing up - I had one!! We watched "cowboys and indians" shooting each other on TV (or world war 2 films) and I guess we didn't realise the Implications of shooting people! But I'm aware that things are very different now, and toy guns are much more realistic so I wouldn't buy one for a child, and if they had one then playing with it should really be in the confines of their home/garden.

About 20 years ago now I was at an airport and we had just gone through security when all hell broke loose. Someone's hand luggage had gone through the scanner and revealed a gun!! It turned out to be a young woman plus child and the gun was her child's toy!! None of us in my tour group could believe she had been so stupid; and in a country where the security staff had real guns there could have been a tragic outcome. No idea what happened, just saw them being escorted away.

Where? How? When?

People have been killed for brandishing a toy gun about.

Our three were brought up with guns, they were instructed professionally, all three could strip a gun by the time they were 11.
They never told their friends about their shooting or showed them their guns, it was just something they did.
The boys both shoot when they can, our daughter is no longer interested.
I do not believe exposure to guns real or toy is harmful.

Our grandson at 18months pushes a car along saying “brum brum” in a year or so I guess he will be pointing two fingers at the dog and saying “pow”

I agree as well, I found some snaps the other day of my brother and I playing in the garden in our cowboy hats and with holsters and toy guns, it all looks strangely innocent compared to some of the online games the GC play. I those days there were many cowboy programmes on the black and white television.