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Toy Guns

Most importantly, children need to know the difference between pretending to shoot toy guns and the potentially fatal dangers of real guns. The toy gun merchandise on the market today is much safer than it used to be. Toy guns are no longer designed to look exactly like the real guns they represent, however, there are still deceiving similarities. The newest toy guns of recent decades will always have a bright-orange piece of plastic somewhere on them (usually on the “dangerous end” or the barrel).

When I was a child my parents forbade toy guns when my brother asked for them—therefore, he designed his own weapons with household items and things such as twigs and fallen branches. It was then that I realized that sometimes kids are going to want to play with guns no matter what. Explaining the difference between real and pretend is one of the very best ways to do this.

I gave my children an example: they often like to play like they are good guys and bad guys—the bad guys lock up the good guys in prison . . . and the game goes on like this for hours. I asked my son: “you wouldn’t really want your sister to be captured in prison where the bad guys were mean to her—right?” “No,” he told me. And I asked him: “you are not really an evil bad-guy right?” “No” he answered again. “Well,” I explained to them, “that is just how it is with toy guns. Toy guns are for pretending and real guns can hurt people or even kill people just by accident! So we have to always stay away from real guns mo matter what and only play with toy guns.

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