I agree with LetsShrug in that the excoriation of guns is part of the femininization of society. The expanding opportunities of women should allow us to explore all of the interesting facets of society that were formerly forbidden to us. Instead, we (women) seem to be trying to compress the new limits into the bounds of the old limits: anything that was not traditionally proper for women should not exist.

eg: There are a number of parks (all of the ones in Orange County!; some in other counties) who now forbid martial arts practices at their parks and facilities, for example. The avoidance of anything that has to do with guns is another example of this, of course.

We need liberation - men's lib; women's lib. We need to expand our option set, not limit it. Yes, that means all sorts of cross dressing mix-gender green-haired people. That is up to the individual. (And I will hire a green haired 'e for anything that does not involve public contact if 'e is competent. If 'e wants a public contact job, then 'e has to be able to 'pass' in the conservative medical community.)

Jan

My thoughts are that too many parents (especially single moms) are wussifying boys from day one. Playing cops and robbers is now considered "violent" behavior by public schools. Not allowed. No finger guns, no "bang bang", no talking about guns, and no drawing or pretending their math cubes are guns. Let's just kill the imagination and the desire to concur the bad guys right out of them. AH! (One of the MANY reasons I removed myself from public ed. ) blur the lines between good and evil as often as possible. And don't discuss it just say,"cuz that's the rule" or "it's not playing nice" or the worst one "guns are bad". Keep them ashamed and confused.... :( And they call this progress... up is down.

Had my collection of cap guns, bb guns etc. when I was a kid. Got my first shotgun when I was 10. Kind of wonder if kids now aren't more interested in mindless computer games, many of which are extremely violent. Thus, virtual guns.

Fantastic topic! The article brought forth such a gamut of memories and perspectives through life - it really is comprehensive of so much.

First the simple memories. As a kid growing up in Massachusetts suburbia in the 1960's playing with toy guns was paramount for a boy. Heavily influenced by Combat!, The Rat Patrol, Twelve O'clock High and others, and by my Dad who was in the Air Force in North Africa, Sicily, and Italy, I was raised on WWII. In the 60's the war was only 20 years ago, we were the good guys and fought to total victory over some very dark and real forces. Since that contemplation in the 60's as a kid (I have never let go of it) about how Germany - ostensibly a modern western civilization could fall into such collective barbarism so completely and so fast? Because the latent, unspoken, vaguely embraced fear lurked and was growing in the underlying tapestry of the "Cultural Revolution" of the 1960's? Could it happen again and anywhere?

That set me up for seeking answers that were found in what Ayn Rand spoke of with the collective and the individual, and finally culminating in reading Leonard Peikoffs tome on The Ominous Parallels as a young adult in the 70's. But as kids it set the tone for engaging in just that - good vs evil play in the frontyard. And it was a blast to play a Nazi - that way you could put on a display dying the most dramatic death with realistic wipe-outs on the front lawn. But it also set the tone for distinguishing reality versus fantasy because the basis of it was so damn real.

And in amazing contrast, while this was all so normal - god - I still have my grade school 3 ring binders covered with drawings of blood dripping bayonets, stukas dive bombing troop positions, bodies blasting apart - with the fact that in Massachusetts suburbia even back then, there was no gun culture to grow up into. No hunting culture, no rifle for 15th birthday, no training on the reality of guns. I didn't get all that until moving west in the late 70's and met people that had grown up with them as normal as could be.

But the breadth of it all takes in the basics of the ability to reason. Recognize that guns are tools, nothing more, used for good or bad by the behavior of the possessor. The simple statement in Shane from a gunfighter that a gun is as bad or as good as its user is so easy to compute with applied reason. And now this simple faculty so essential for human survival and civilized behavior is being obfuscated, unraveled, and thrown under the anarchy of the mind bus - it is equally astonishing as is contemplating the descendancy of Germany into total collective barbarism.

Finally, as an adult and with my Dad in later years I inherited my grandfathers 30-30 Winchester that had always been in the closet in a long box. It had to be shipped via FFL of course and when I picked it up at the local gun shop, there was a town cop present shooting the shit so to speak with the shop owner. He remarked that it is really something to inherit a grandfathers "killing tool". Yes indeed it is, and yes indeed it can be used to kill as needed and at the discretion of the user. And indeed rationality and responsibility must begin with the children.

Now to go and pull out my pearl handled (fake) six shooter cap guns and belt and holsters that I still have.

Hello XenokRoy,
As kids my brothers, friends and I had those old fashioned cap guns with the red spools of paper caps. We would play "cops and robbers." We knew they were toys. We all had parents that had real guns in the house and when we were old enough we were trained with the real things, taken hunting and later received guns for birthday presents when old enough to go hunting with Dad. We were from an early age instructed to never touch them without adult supervision, to respect them as dangerous and shown just how dangerous they were. Accompanying a mentor on a hunting trip while young without a firearm but witnessing a harvest will provide lesson. The number one rule was never, ever point a gun at anyone even if it was believed to be unloaded. Guns were commonplace and thus not a discovered fascination hidden in the closet that no one told us about. We did not play with them. They were dangerous just like a sharp knife or a hot stove burner. As a precaution, when we were very young, my Father kept the bullets separate from the guns but he knew where he could retrieve them quickly if need be. We lived in farm country and they were a natural part of growing up. I feel today many accidents happen because of fascination of the unknown and lack of precautions and instruction from the irresponsible. The paranoid do-gooders and scolds are the problem.

My two cents...
Happy holidays,
O.A.

Old dino just went down memory lane. For Christmas little dino chick received a Roy Rogers cowboy toy gun with a belt and holster.
It actually had 6 bullets that you could take apart and put a round cap into before you loaded the revolver's cylinder through a loading gate..
I loved the smell of cap gunpowder on that Christmas morning.

My sons were raised with guns in the house, but they never had toy guns. My reasoning was (and still is) that young children need to be taught that guns are NOT toys. That being said, on their 10th birthdays, they were given their first rifle and taught not only how to shoot it, but also how to care for it properly. When they were 11, they were taken hunting, and they learned firsthand what guns could do. Yes, they used sticks, etc. as "pretend" guns when they were very young, but they also grew up knowing that REAL guns were not toys to be picked up and aimed at another person (until they both served in the Army, of course, where my younger son spent the last two years of his service as a door gunner in the Airborne Division).

Someone wants to get rid of toy guns so any bit of info not favorable to guns needs to be out there.
I loved my toy guns as a kids as did my brothers. And every kid I ever met as a kid did to, unless their parents where anti-gun. These poor kids suffered by it! So the either played by themselves or with luck had a friend lend them one when their parents were not looking. None of us ever have been in trouble or committed a crime. Playing with toy guns is a great part of being a kid. I guess some people can't help trying to control what others do. A sad need to try and control!

Toys are part of the learning process and that includes toy guns, sticks and finger guns.

It is also my belief that every child should be taught to respect firearms as soon as they are mature enough to understand. That includes being taught how to shoot. With toys they learn what is not real and when they destroy a 2x4 with a gun they learn the destructive power of the real tool.

I think they have lost popularity, not because a majority of parents don't like guns, but because a majority of parents don't want to go through the hassle of having their killed expelled for making a pop tart look like a gun or something similarly stupid. The majority is being held .. at gunpoint .. by a minority of extremists. At my daughters kindergarten parent teacher conference, her teacher showed me a game to take home to help her learn letter sounds. The game is called "Oh No!". Basically if you draw a card that says "Oh No!" you have to start over collecting cards. She explained to me that the game used to be called "Bang!" but 'some' parents or school board members (who knows) did not like that so they changed the name of the game. She rolled her eyes as she explained it and we kind of nodded in agreement. So I really think most people and teachers exercise common sense, but the penalties doled out by the extremists have gotten out of control. It always starts with something small. Who wants to sit for hours and debate the name of a card game? The majority would not do that, so you end up with the lunatics in control.

We planned on not giving toy guns to our kids, but our son was naturally attracted to them, so we allow it. When I was a kid, toy guns seemed equally discouraged. Our boy and girl each fall squarely in the middle of traditional gender roles, despite our efforts to be gender neutral. Our boy loves guns, martial arts, tanks, and machines.

I love watching our kids play scientist, police officer, teacher, attorney, doctor, etc. If they like guns, I think it's fine they play guns since before long they'll be men and women with a Constitutional right to guns.

Women's lib starting turning boys into "sensitive" wimps. When I was growing up, everyone had a cap gun, I had my Dale Evans model. We pretended to shoot the bad bandits. When I was 8, my dad taught me the rules and skills of using a real rifle. Then, about the 70s and after goofy moms started saying guns were bad, none for their kids. Kids should be able to play act, work through right and wrong, with the guidance of parents. Sadly schools jumped on the lets turn the students into wimps bandwagon, brain dead moms jumped for joy, and the kids were not even supposed to admit when they felt anger about anything. Bully's were to be tolerated and their victims were to learn to be better victims, according to local schools.Parents who give kids guns, however, real or toy, should really discuss the proper use of them, as we have no Roy Rogers and Gene Autry anymore to model it. Sadly, we are all being played by the one world crowd, whose goal is to abolish guns from citizens lest they disagree with the ruling class, as they work to do away with the middle class.