Toy Gun's

[u538]

I cam across this today and wanted to throw this out and see what you think abought it? I think it is a bad idea and will get some kid killed trying to be funny or just playing and pointing it at people or acting like thay have the real thing saying thay will put a cap in you. see what do you think? Should this type of toy be banned?
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...tem=1868295716

and

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...item=722787785

[Dan]

No.

[txinvestigator1]

Child's play collides with real-life dangers
10/12/2002

By KAREN M. THOMAS / The Dallas Morning News


Boys will be boys. And most boys, at some time, will pretend to use a stick, a toy gun or even his finger to shoot at friends.

Acting out aggression and fantasy play is the stuff that childhood is made of, say most psychologists and parenting experts. Such play is normal and shouldn't necessarily worry parents.

But these are not normal times. We now live in a culture where boys have brought real guns to school and shot at their classmates. We live with the realization that terrorism could strike us at any time. We now know that a sniper can seek us out at random and pull the trigger.

The boys' natural inclination to play collides with the very real danger of guns in our neighborhoods.

"What was innocently done in the past can now be misinterpreted," says Dr. Donald Chandler, a Dallas psychologist who has worked with boys and young men. "We want our police officers on the alert so that we don't have a Columbine and at the same time, we want our children to have the freedom to play. It's very difficult."

Dr. Chandler says a recent incident where a Coppell police officer mistook a realistic-looking Airsoft pistol held by a 12-year-old for a real weapon ought to serve as a "reality check" for everyone.

The boy was playing with neighborhood friends when the officer noticed him with what he thought was a handgun. The officer chased the boy and drew his own firearm when he got out of his car. The boy explained he was playing and that the gun was a toy. No one was hurt.

Parents later said they would reconsider letting their children run around the neighborhood with the toy weapons.

"There will be toy guns and we will continue to have them, but we have to sit down more and more with our kids and tell them 'You have to play with them in this area,' " says Dr. Chandler.

Not everyone agrees. Michael Gurian, author of The Wonder of Boys (J. P. Tarcher, 1997), says that the onus shouldn't be placed solely on parents. Instead, he says, toy manufacturers should stop producing such realistic weapons.

"There is no reason why boys shouldn't play this way," he says. "Boys naturally play with weapons and try to dominate each other. It's good, healthy aggression play. The problem is the cop driving by and going 'Oh my God.' We shouldn't overreact to the play but we'll never get away from the possibility of confusion," he says.

Dr. Gurian says confining children to play in the back yard with such toys isn't the solution, either.

"It's in the male nature to roam and explore. That is why he is playing with that object. Parents, as consumers, can look at the gun and say, 'I'm not going to buy this for you because it looks too realistic.' So what if the kid whines?" he says.

According to Chris Byrne, an independent toy consultant, U.S. toy manufacturers have been shying away from making realistic-looking toy weapons.

Such toys, though, stay in demand in places such as Texas, where there is a gun culture built around long-standing hunting traditions, he says. The manufacturers have placed bright orange on the toy guns' barrels or on buttons. Still, some have been mistaken as real.

"Parents have to know what their children are playing with and should buy things that are consistent with their values. They may also want to provide a context in how the child plays," Mr. Byrne says.

Marion Wadsworth of Irving, the mother of four boys, ages 6 to 13, says that she doesn't intend to stop her children from playing with toy weapons. Her two oldest boys own Airsoft guns and often play with other neighborhood children with them. They were also stopped earlier this year by a concerned police officer.

"They immediately dropped their guns," she says. "And that would certainly be the rule to do that."

While she is aware that the toy weapons might be mistaken for the real thing, she doesn't think that playing with the toy guns adversely affects her sons' development.

"This isn't going to be politically correct, but I just see a boy thing going on out there," she says. "There is camaraderie and they are having a lot of fun. I don't see any sinister thing lurking behind it. It's just been a healthy outlet with boys out there playing."

Best to play it safe, not wind up sorry
10/12/2002

By JACQUIELYNN FLOYD / The Dallas Morning News

George Dunham could have made a large, outraged, public stink this week after his terrified 11-year-old ran home and reported that a police officer had just pulled a loaded gun on one of his neighborhood playmates.

He could have been furious and defensive. Parents have an understandable tendency to react that way where their kids are concerned. We have seen it in plenty of cases: a girl who was told not to wear a pentagram to school, a boy who was told he couldn't play basketball unless he cut his braids, a youngster who faced mandatory suspension for absent-mindedly bringing a fishing tool to class in his backpack.

In every case, the parents noisily criticized authorities they viewed as dealing too sternly with their children. Sometimes I agree with these parents and sometimes I don't, but I understand that emotion can take over when you perceive even a minor threat to your child.

So I wouldn't have been awfully shocked if Mr. Dunham, a familiar Dallas radio sports talk show host, had been outspokenly critical of the Coppell police officer who on Monday mistook the realistic-looking toy guns a group of boys were waving around for the genuine article.

I wouldn't have been surprised if Mr. Dunham had administered a public hosing to the company that makes the replicas, or the stores that sell them, or our craven and materialistic culture that makes kids crave the latest and showiest toys on the market.

George Dunham did none of these things. He instead performed the public service of saying that allowing his son to have the toy was a mistake and that he was frightened and embarrassed by the incident.

"Police have enough on their hands," he told The Dallas Morning News this week. "They don't need to be having to figure out what's a real gun and what's not."

Like many other parents in his comfy Coppell neighborhood, Mr. Dunham gave in when his son begged for an "airsoft," a line of strikingly authentic-looking pistols and assault rifles that shoot soft, reusable pellets.

They have been popular for a while with adults who like realistic "replica" weaponry but have apparently crossed over into the kids' toy market and are being heralded as the Next Big Thing for the coming Christmas season.

Your child may want one, may beg for one, may be insanely jealous of the spoiled rich boy on the next block who has a whole arsenal of them.

But better think twice. These "toys" can create unexpected havoc, which Mr. Dunham freely admits he learned the hard way. The Coppell Police Department called out the troops after an officer spotted a 12-year-old running down the street, trying to conceal what gave every appearance of being a 9mm handgun.

The officer, in accordance with his training, pulled his service revolver and ordered the kid to drop it. The boy complied and burst into tears while his terrified pals beat feet for home and their moms.

I would hate to see this issue spiral off into a repetitive debate over whether toy guns are evil. (I can report only that my brother, whose interest in weaponry commenced when he built a makeshift bazooka out of vacuum cleaner parts at the age of 2, grew up to be a thoughtful and responsible man.) I don't want to see the plain, pragmatic safety issue here lost among pointy-headed musings on our gun-addled culture.

The whole incident came up when Mr. Dunham talked about what happened on his morning show on KTCK-AM (1310) "The Ticket."

I listen to The Ticket now and then, but for me, sports radio is a little like visiting a foreign country where they ostensibly speak your language but you can understand only about one word in three.

So I didn't hear him mention it. Mr. Dunham could have been a coast-to-coast media celeb about this gun business all week, but he has turned down a dozen requests to appear on television news shows. He doesn't want to be a crusader.

"I don't want people to think I'm anti-gun, or that I'm telling other parents how to handle their kids," he said when we talked Friday. "There was a little bit of 'Hey, this guy's a media person' in all this, and it could have been a real media circus."

Mr. Dunham didn't want a circus. He just wanted to be a good dad.

[Stump]

Personally, I don't see a problem with it. As I was growing up, my parents taught me the difference between toys and things you shouldn't be playing with (we did have toy guns). * However, I was not around guns that much growing up. * As long as parents teach children what guns can do and not to play with the real thing, then it shouldn't be a big deal. Too many parents these days just ignore their children until there is a problem. Know what your child is doing and communicate with them all the time, explaining WHY they shouldn't do this. A parent who says "I don't want you to aim this toy gun at strangers because they won't know that it is a toy" will be listened to more often than the parent that says "Don't take that toy gun to school because I said so" .
Not that this is dangerous, but I used to have a toy phone as a toddler. I remember my mother telling me that it was like a grown-up phone and not to use the grown up phone like I did my phone. They never saw any calls to China or anything on their phone bill, so they did their job.

[Dan]

I say we teach Gun safety at a young age, I'd think it would have a big impact on the number of unfortunate child related fatalities. Drill it into them that guns are tools, not toys.

[Stump]

"George Dunham could have made a large, outraged, public stink this week after his terrified 11-year-old ran home and reported that a police officer had just pulled a loaded gun on one of his neighborhood playmates. "
I just saw your post, TX - that article is too cool. Wish more people were like that!

[txinvestigator1]

The deal with my long post is that a group of kids in the DFW area were out on the street playing with these airsoft guns.

A local cop happened upon them and a kid was nearly shot.

[u538]

Very true. I beleave its all up to perants to teach gun safty most do not. I have tought my son and will keep on doing so. Just wished more people did but what I was thinking was the avarage person not knowing that the kids where playing. With more and more people starting carring firearms with the fear of being hurt. I know that kids can get ahold of the real thing and thay do. But there is not alot of differance from the real ones and the toy one when thay look this close to the real thing. I don't mind kid's playing with toy gun's. I did when I was young also. I just dont want to see a young kid die playing or a teenager playing acting like he is holding someone up. This dose happen. Anyone can make a mistake. From the street cop to the people on the street. This is verry close to the real gun. That is to much to deal with having to shoot a kid with a toy gun just playing around when you can't tell them apart. I pray that this will not happen. But I think it has in the past. I can just see alot of people getting hurt over this doing dumb things with them.

[u538]

That article is a good one I rember when that hapened.

Im sorry I worded it worng.