Is it still socially acceptable to give your children toy colt 45's, winchester repeaters and the ilk to play with?
Do they still play cowboys and indians, nazis and commandos etc? Or is it all Dancing on Ice and X Factor?

On a related note, I ran across some Action Man sets the other day- I was really tempted to get something for our wee boy, but at £30 each I baulked a bit. Coincidentally a couple of days later my wife showed me this article.

Yes.

Boys will make a sword or a gun out of a stick. Girls will play with dolls.

**** the bunny hugging Guardianistas. Let children be children.

Kids dig scars!

🙂

i've just come back from Camp Bestival where I spent a lot of the time avoiding arrows with big suckers on the end fired by festival crazed children – all good natured.

I had a few toy guns as a kid, although I still want a real one to recreate everything I ever saw on the tele I don't have an urge to actually hurt (most) people.

Remember guns don't kill people, rappers do!

NO

.

**** the right wing hate filled war mongers and Let children be children and grow up in innocence as best as possible

Remember guns don't kill people, rappers do!

That's true, I seen it in a documentary on BBC2

Same here, Let anybody tell me that my Grandchild cannot grow up due to PC and they will receieve a very swift kick in the bollocks.. stuff the PC bastards I say…

My son and niece are out in the garden at the moment, slaughtering space orcs with a huge array of weapons.

Junkyard – Member
NO

.
**** the right wing hate filled war mongers and Let children be children and grow up in innocence as best as possible
POSTED 19 MINUTES AGO # REPORT-POST

at this juncture it might be worth pointing out that communists, ie, left-wing politically, carried out their revolutions at gun point. Didn't Chairman Mao, a Communist, not a right-wing hate filled warmonger, make a comment about something coming from the barrel of a gun? How about Pol Pot, Stalin, Sendoro Illuminoso, Robert Mugabe. As someone pointed out above, you can deny children access to gun-shaped toys, and they'll just go an use a stick. Children grow up and largely grow out of it. Something you could well emulate.

I played with toy guns etc. & my kids did

Nothing wrong with it IMO

Japs & commandos – shoot the little…… OK, best leave it at that 🙂

CountZero – Member

Humour bypass surgery a success then but can it be reversed 🙄

it's culturally ingrained let them play, you can explain consequences as they grow – take them to a Remembrance Day parade and explain what it means.

**** the bunny hugging Guardianistas. Let children be children.

Oh FFS, how predictable! Take your left-wing-guardianista-conspiracy-against-all-things-fun-head out of your well fagged arse and wipe it with your torygraph to give it a clean.

It's down to you mate…you're the parent. If you'd rather they didn't play guns and piuttin' caps in one anothers' asses, then don't…we all killed one another violently in virutal battles when we were kids and none of us grew up to be a gangsta. If you're any kind of decent parent, you'll explain soon enough that guns are generally bad.

They'll be seeing far worse in whatever version of Grand Theft Auto they're playing when it comes to it.

All kids should be given spud guns. All lifes valuable lessons can be learnt from spud guns.

Save your money/their pocket-money – despite your best intentions they'll be running around with stick guns, swords, light sabres etc. It's what little boys do.
Regards
A bunny hugging Grauniadista

lol at unclefred

too true though, too true

Black widow catapult and a bag of chuckies, created many many shithot long distance runners where i grew up.

I remember spud guns, catapults, cap guns…I need to go to the toy shop for my, erm, nephew

Brilliant answer Deadly darcy.

So predictable Count Zero. Yawn

I think its down to the parents. I have a friend who was brought up without any violent toys, and he passed that onto his kids. They are all fine, i think! There are a thousand things kids can play with …Instruments are just as stimulating as guns.

Standard issue when I was a kid, didnt leave home without one, hours of fun hunting my mates and avoiding gettin shot..
http://www.npw.co.uk/resizer/media/prod/2000-0.jpg/250;250

Don't be daft, buy him a real gun instead. Load it with big bullers and teach how to use it. Useful skills should be taught at an early age, right?
FAIW I found live ammo in front of a primary school in TW3 area, it was more exciting for the kids than a couple [strike]having sex[/strike] enjoying the sunshine in the park. Guns rule!

What makes more noise then ? a set of drums or a cap gun..
It could get even worse, a violin, trumpet, harpsichord, ..

All kids should be given spud guns. All lifes valuable lessons can be learnt from spud guns.

The thread should have ended after this. Good work Mr UncleFred.

Can you still buy cap guns? you know the ones that take rolls of paper caps with little dots of gun powder on.

We used to buy loads of caps when I was a kid (1970's) – didn't half make a load bang when you smashed 4 rolls at once with a hammer!

Had double holtsers with pistols + a winchester rifle – my sister + her friends always ended up as the Indians + being shot numerous times.

All kids should be given spud guns. All lifes valuable lessons can be learnt from spud guns.

Adults should then move onto potato cannons. Fact.

So pretty much everyone agrees that kids should be allowed toy guns/WMDs

Now there's a refreshing change

There must be one or two folk here who can liven this debate up a bit by claiming toy guns are the work of Beelzebub etc?

I've always been wary of giving kids toy guns just in case they do end up getting desensitised to the fact that rel ones can kill people. Strange really, 'cos as a kid everyone had them, or wanted them, or made them out of bits of stick.

I really don't think that you can stop kids wanting to play <generic good guys> vs <generic bad guys> any more than you can want it to stop raining. it is just going to happen.

There will come a time when they find out about the real thing though, be it in the cadets, or at a shoot or a fair or something, and at that point instilling proper safety and respect for them should come in.

Then I gues you have to hope that they take it on bard and don't try and re-enact GTA IV with air rifles.

But could you trust the police to be able to tell it's a child with a toy gun rather than a tiny terrorist on the rampage?

I agree – Let Kids be Kids, but more importantly teach a kid respect.
That is whats seriously lacking in todays society.
Give the Police some real power again, in my day you were shit scared of them. Some of these w@nkers you see on tv being arrested should feel some force, instead of being allowed to abuse the police and get away with it because of Human Rights.

I don't believe for a moment that the urge to pretend to kill people is hard-wired into children's brains so that it's some form of child abuse to encourage them to play something else. But equally it is patent nonsense that playing guns as a child makes you a bad or violent person. So I come out not caring. Waaay too much energy is expended in some circles worrying about these issues. 🙂

Potato cannons rock!!

Boys will be boys:

http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoID=1579238392

We consciously didn't give our son guns as toys, and asked others not to. He's a healthy well adjusted lad of 11, likes most things 11 year boys like, just never played with toy guns. It's not really massively important.

You need stick and then go ahahahahahahahaha ahahahahahahahahaha or other silly gun noises. I had guns as a kid and it never did me any harm in fact I get to play with bigger shooty bang bang sticks now 😆
In all seriousness though boys will just be boys no matter what.

My weapons armoury as a kid

1 x plastic spud gun
1 x metal spud gun
1 x luger style water pistol
1 x slingshot catapult
1 x cowboy style cap gun
1 x jumbo elastic band rope made myself with hard elastic band ball at the end for attacking while out of arms reach.

That boys will be boys schtick is crap.

Boys learn behaviour from those around them (and those on tv) just like everyone else. Shooting things is a very persistent meme.

People are de-sensitised to violence. This is not a good thing.

So predictable TandemJeremy. Yawn

Did anyone make 'Dutch Arrows' when they were kids..
IE; Knicks the jokers from your dads pack of card, get a nice straight piece of willow wood, let it dry out a bit, sharpen one end and split the other end for about 2 inches, make some flights out of the jokers, put them into the 2 slots, tie the end of the willow stick to stop flights coming out. Job done.. Next nick a lace out of one of your dads workboots, tie a knot in one end, go down the longest field you could find.. wrap lace round the shaft of the arrow – some where near the flight, allow lace to fold over the knot and wrap the lace around your fingers till you could hold the arrow near the point… aim for the sky. throw with all your might at the horizon.. a good arrow could land over the length of a footy field away… brilliant, when with mates like Agincourt..

Had a real gun in Africa (.22 rifle) when I was a kid. So did most of my friends. We were taught all the safety rules and obeyed them. We knew it was real grownup stuff. We only killed each other with our toy guns.

Best rule was if you kill it, then you have to eat it.

In Oz always had a gun around the house with no problems, but not now because too much hassle.

How come Switzerland isn't a bloodbath if guns are dangerous? – almost every home has a military weapon apparently.