Peter Funt’s recent Washington Post article is total garbage, but he’s right about one thing: our kids will determine the future of Second Amendment rights in our country.
Funt calls for toy sellers to “disarm” for the holidays. He finds toy guns “repulsive,” and he calls on Amazon and other merchants to “back off” on selling “the most realistic and daunting toy weapons.”
To his credit, everything in his article prior to this conclusion works to invalidate it. He admits that Michael Thompson’s 2009 book, “It’s a Boy,” concludes that there’s “no scientific evidence” to suggest that playing with toy guns in childhood leads to “real-life aggression.”
He also admits that he himself played with toy revolvers as a child and those experiences “didn’t promote an interest in firearms later in life.” “Indeed,” he continues, “I came to favor stricter gun regulations, and my kids never owned guns of any kind.”
If modern science has found no connection between toy guns and real-world violence, and Funt himself hasn’t found such a connection in his personal life, what’s the problem?
The problem, as usual, is “military-style” toy firearms.
Six-shooters are fine, but toys that mimic 1911s, AK-47s, and Barrett sniper rifles are totally off the table, Funt says. These toys should be banned because, unlike revolvers, which have never hurt anyone, these real-life firearms have killed people.
The piece makes very little sense and is obviously the result of the conflict between Funt’s fond childhood memories and his current distaste for guns and “gun culture.”
But he does make one point that gun owners should note. After calling for a toy gun ban, he wonders, “Maybe the long-term approach to modifying gun culture could start with kids and their toys.”
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Toy gun bans like those in New York aren’t only designed to avoid tragic misunderstandings between police and kids who should know better. These bans are designed to change “gun culture” from the bottom up. Anti-gun forces hope that by limiting kids’ access to realistic-looking toy guns, they can choke off any interest in firearms before it matures.
This might sound far-fetched, but the inverse is totally true. If we don’t instill in our kids a deep appreciation for the Second Amendment, other forces in our society will be more than happy to fill the void. If we don’t include our kids in age-appropriate shooting activities, the broader culture will push them away from the shooting sports and towards more socially acceptable pastimes.
Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t enroll your six-year-old in the next 3-gun competition. But I’m getting my kid his first BB gun this Christmas. He already knows the four gun-safety rules by heart, and I’ll be supervising him until he’s older and more responsible (and able to pump the gun by himself).
Hopefully, he’ll have a positive experience with his BB gun and grow up to be a responsible, knowledgeable gun owner who will pass on those values to his own children. At the very least, I doubt he’ll end up calling for toy gun bans in the Washington Post.
Best thing about these stupid libs is they are all running out and getting every JAB recommended. If these epidemiologists are correct, then there should be a drastic reduction in their population. I find that to be a good thing.
I did NOT grow up in a family that had a tradition of firearm ownership. My great-grandfather was the last for 2 generations until I came along. When I was a lad most of the boys on the block played “war” with toy guns but I believe that the thoughtful gun owners did NOT want their children pointing even toy guns at someone else. The antis will never understand the mindset of the pro-2A people.
Still, playing war with toy guns seems better than the video option.
I agree with banning any toy that could look like a real weapon to a law enforcement officer. Realistic toy guns can put officer in a real dilemma — defend oneself and shoot a kid brandshing what looks like a real weapon, or holding fire and getting shot by a real weapon. I had shiny, pot metal cap guns and played hide and seek war all over the neighborhood. Neighbors didn’t bat an eye. Went on to Cub Scout bb guns, pheasant “bird dog,” and a 30-year military career qualifying expert in both rifle and pistol due to my home gun safety and practice. So I suggest make all toy guns distinctive-enough that an officer can instantly tell it’s a toy … and we’re good to go …
No one is going to change the human condition, the one that commits crime. We will always have that element that will use a knife or a rock etc.
Every gun in every movie TV show and video game ever made should be edited by putting a South Park style cartoon Shake Weight over the firearms…all magazines (especially the spares) edited to look like “truck ball$”…every shot fired modified to look like the “spritzer” with little swimmers flying at and spattering on the targets. Even the report sounds should be edited to sound sploochy.
Not sure how this will help society but just imagine the Matrix or John Wick remakes.
COVID conditioning is part of it too. They want you to learn to accept arbitrary rules. If the rules make no sense – if they contradict what you were told a week before – that’s even better. The idea is to train you to submit to them, to accept less and to accept their commands, regardless of how ridiculous they are.
That same goal is Very prevalent among the gun-ban crowd. Just do whatever screwed-up idea that’s floating around between their two brain cells and gun violence will magically disappear. We’ll all be safe and secure, and the criminals will see the light and pursue another job.
I had a former friend who was a flaming Lib. He was a foaming-at-the-mouth anti-gunner. He once asked me, “If it would save just one life, wouldn’t it be worth it to ban ALL the guns?”
I said to him that that would leave only the violent criminals armed, and the law-abiding citizens at their mercy, which none of them have. Of course, in true head-up-the-ass Lib fashion, he rejected the reality of that outcome.
Bottom line: They are not rational and can’t be reasoned with. Proceed accordingly.
The reason you must teach your kids why we have a second amendment!!!
The Old America I grew up in is dead and gone.
Hurry up, TEXiT, and get us out of the crap hole this mongrelized country has become.
Ha! Just heard on Glenn Beck’s show how Texas is becoming evermore like Commiefornia. Beck lives there, so he sees it first person. Texas is one of the states Commiefornians are fleeing to. They’re doing it mostly for economic reasons and to escape the out of control crime wave there. Problem is, their mindset hasn’t changed a bit. They support the same Leftist politicians and “woke” ideology that caused the situation they’re fleeing from, and will now “fundamentally transform” their new home state into the same sh-thole they ran away from. THAT is the very definition of utter stupidity!
Movies need to abandon guns. Actors shoot people and they face no consequences.
Actors use real firearms all the time. We can stop indoctrination of our children, because they don’t realize that when you’re gone there’s no coming back for the rerun. So hit California’s income where it hurts. These California’s are nuts! Oh I forgot movies don’t cause indoctrination. Right!
I agree. Most kids want toy guns because they see them in movies and in video games. Rather than take a toy away, clean up the movies and games.
The theory of hegemony from Antonio Gramsci has been adopted since the 60s in Latin America to create a population that believes only in the Marxist point of view. You stealthily put marxist teachers in the schools and everyone is taught to think like a marxist and pray by their credos. In the middle term the ‘revolution’ wins with no shots fired. The same has been made since the 90s in USA and nobody is seeing it
Well, they’re seeing it now! (about time, too)
Remove toys that resemble actual firearms? Let’s see which might those be. Can assume military style will be first, but where will it end? That certain kids could ID the Galil was not an issue, nor the FFL of one commenter. Out of ALL those potential proteges from detail oriented kids to lesser observant hicks, who did not take the lead and assemble at least a couple capable mentors to reel in 2A advocates?
Having mentored 100’s in various life skills, can state with certainty most issues begin from lack of guidance, exposure to consequence, and seeing rewards for the right things over wrong.
OK, so you take away all of the toy guns, but how do you stop all of the kids from sticking up a thumb and pointing a finger and going “BANG BANG”, i got you???
I had toy guns (cap firing) and later BB gun as a kid, as an adult I not only owned guns but became a certified firearms instructor and range safety officer I also worked as a security officer and carried a pistol for over 20 years.
Teach everyone about safety, take away the mystery about guns and let them make the choice about owning guns or not.
Wow Doug, you’re living in another reality yourself.
“… how do you stop all of the kids from sticking up a thumb and pointing a finger and going “BANG BANG”, i got you???”
How? You expel little Howard from school and call his parents into the principal’s office for a tongue-lashing. Then, leak it to the local media how Mr. & Mrs. Smith are training their son to be a violent “domestic terrorist.” THAT’S how!
You go on to say–
“Teach everyone about safety, take away the mystery about guns and let them make the choice about owning guns or not.”
To the Progressive-Socialists out there, “safety” is about eliminating ALL firearms; Period! There’s no “mystery about guns”– they’re all Bad! And they’ve made their “choice about owning guns” already. It’s a big NO for them, and they want to make that the (involuntary)choice for You, too.
Open your eyes and stop being so willfully naive.
For a while, I deliberately did not give toy weapons to my sons.
Instead, they picked up fallen branches from the large oak tree in my yard and broke off pieces that they then used to mimic firearms for their play. Big sticks were rifles and small sticks were pistols.
When they learned that the boy next door had extra toy guns that he would share, they discarded the sticks.
Children can teach you many things if you are willing to learn.
Why not ban the use of guns in movies ?
Make them use bananas ? Or ?
The problem is not guns. The problem is parents not being real parents but wanting to be the “good friend “ who gives the child everything the child wants. No discipline equals a child who feels he/she can do whatever they want with no consequences for their actions. The other problem is politicians who feel that the government has to regulate every aspect of people’s lives.
The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.
Adolf Hitler
If they are really concerned with tamping down potential sources for getting kids interested in firearms, they are looking in the wrong place. It is not toys, it is video games. That is where kids are learning to be enthusiastic for weapons of war, in violent video games like Call of Duty and PUBG and the like. Whether they are hunting nazis or zombies or… Master Chiefs? Halos? they are learning to celebrate gun violence.
True story, when I still had my FFL, there was a Galil. Frequently, the grown country bumpkins came in and identified it frequently as an AK or SKS (one guy split the difference and decided it was an “SK”) but dozens of teenage kids correctly identified the Galil, even if they didn’t say it right. The Galil was a higher end weapon of war on one of the games at the time – Call of Duty Black Ops maybe? That was part of why I let my FFL go.
I am glad to read that you have let your FFL go for good, Blue Dog, because I cannot believe that you really see video games as the reason for why children may be “enthusiastic” about guns or even warfare. Only God knows if I may have children one day, but if I will then I can guarantee you that they will learn everything about gun safety first, then train how to disassemble and reassemble a gun and only then, when they have reached a certain age and therefore enough mental capability, I will allow them to do some target practice. Why will I do this, you ask? Certainly not because I want to train them for war, but because I want them to be capable of defending themselves all the time, so that I do not have to constantly worry about them, especially now, during these crazy times with an uncertain future. And guess what, when I was a boy of about 7-8 years, I have received a toy gun as a present from my parents, which are otherwise anti-gun by the way, that was capable of making all kinds of sounds when you’ve pulled the trigger. Even back then I was never thinking that war or violence are any good, because my parents have told me about this. Again, they are anti-gun themselves, but they would never see toy guns or video games as a dangerous influence on children, because even they know that this is just insane. They know that proper parenting is the key! Do not rely on schools or the media to teach your children the difference between right and wrong!
Here is something else about myself, to give you further proof about the false statement of yours: Despite they are anti-gun, my parents have always allowed me to play all kinds of violent video games, may it have been Doom, Medal Of Honor, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, Mafia, Postal 2, just to name some of them, or even war-based strategy games with graphic violence, like Jagged Alliance 2, which my father played and enjoyed a lot as well. And yet, here I am, a peaceful individual, ready to defend myself, but never seeing war or violence as something good. The violent video games excuse didn’t work after Columbine and it doesn’t work now either. Millions of people around the world play violent video games every day, yet how many of them would go out into reality and commit crimes, massacres whatever? And even if some of them would actually believe that war is something great and they want to become real heroes, like the ones in the video games they play, they will learn the difference between virtuality and reality as soon as they enter boot camp. I still remember how much I’ve struggled at first, when I have finally gotten my hands on a real gun for the first time in my life (Colt 1911 Government). This did teach me a lesson that just because one of my favorite video games is Mafia, where the Colt 1911 is the best pistol (obviously), it does not mean that I can actually handle a Colt 1911 in real life without proper education. Today I even laugh about the fact that you sometimes can clear a gun malfunction in Jagged Alliance 2 by just allowing your mercenary to keep pulling the trigger, until he fires the stuck round anyway with no problem from his malfunctioning gun.
You’re not totally wrong there. Now, it doesn’t mean that because a kid plays video games he’s gonna go out and kill his classmates at school, but…….
I was visiting a friend of mine one day while her son was sitting on the couch playing a video game projected on the TV screen. I’ve never played one myself, or even seen one being played, so I was curious. I sat down next to him and just watched. He was shooting at “enemy” figures popping-up amongst war-torn buildings in some urban landscape. I was astonished at the realistic graphics. Blood, guts, & brains splattered everywhere with every hit. The death and gore had no effect on him, as he was only concerned with his score. The kids who perpetrate mass murder at their schools have expressed eerily similar orientations claiming they wanted to kill as many as possible– to rack-up the score.