Gun Debate Now Includes the Toy Industry; should toy guns be banned?
Earlier in the month I wrote a piece entitled: "The Toy Industry; Are We the Military Industrial Complex of Childhood?" In that posting I noted that "when the second and first amendment advocates began pointing fingers at each other after the Newtown tragedy, we in the toy industry were not accused of promoting violence. One side pointed the finger at real guns as the cause and the other said it was due to "first person shooter games" and movies."
As can be attested to by this headline: "Gun-Control Debate Hits $16 Billion Toy Industry," I spoke too soon. The author, Beth Snyder Bulik, wrote about a blogger, Meredith Carrol with the Denver Post, who has banned toy guns in her home. She also wants them to be removed from stores.
I was intrigued and located Ms. Carrol's posting "Playing Around with Violence." I found her piece to be compassionate and her frustration fully understandable. Many of us felt and feel so frustrated that we feel the need to take action and make a difference.
As you will see, I don't agree with her on banning toy guns but let me allow her to speak for herself (and I encourage you to read her entire posting):
"While I was at a supermarket in Aspen just a few days ago, a boy not older than 4 sat in a shopping cart being
pushed by his mom while creating a war - complete with imaginary bombs and noisy explosions - between an apple and potato... It's been two weeks since the atrocities at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and the thought of guns still makes me shudder with a profound sadness and dread."
She goes on to write:
"If we don't think that violent video games, shoot 'em-up films, toy weapons and imaginary wars being fought by our young boys contribute in some small way to the more than 33,000 annual gun deaths, we need to think again. Little boys playing with little guns grow up to be adolescents and young adults who often feel falsely empowered by the nonsensical skills they think they've developed using a video-game controller or mouse."
She concludes her thought on toy guns by writing: "families who tacitly allow the desensitization of little kids and adolescents to blood and death, and permit violence - real or imaginary - as an activity played during family time and on home turf are fooling themselves if they don't think they're part of a larger cultural epidemic."
What struck me was that the child in the shopping cart was not playing with a gun. He was acting out violence using, of all things, an apple and a potato. It is the human condition that children, and particularly boys, act out themes of violence in childhood. Some psychologists believe it is how they adjust to the violence and possibly death that awaits them as adults.
I don't think that a parent has a lot of control over a child's need to act out violence. Discouraging it may, in fact, have the same impact as depriving kids of sugary treats. They may go overboard in the other direction as adults. Children have been playing with violent toys since before there were toys and I imagine they will continue to do so.
Let me be very clear, I have in the past stated on several occasions that I believe that the toys we play with as children have an impact on who we become as adults. It would be disingenuous of me to say, therefore, that toy gun play is an exception.
I believe, however, that if we take toy guns away, children will, as Ms. Carroll noted, use potatoes and tomatoes an in addition a finger or a stick; it is therefore all context.
A healthy child can play with toy guns and grow up to be a healthy adult. Parents have an obligation to their sons and daughters as well as society in general to make sure that their children play appropriately and that violence does not consume them as the overwhelming point of play.
Ms. Carroll is right; it starts in the home. Where I disagree is in the notion that banning toys will solve the problem; you may as well ban vegetables. What is important is for parents to monitor their children and if they don't like what they see, take action; speak with the child and if that does not work get help.
Toy industry members:
Do you agree with Meredith Carroll's perspective on banning toy guns?
Do you believe that toys guns have an impact on violence later in life?
Let us know your thoughts.
lucas jurgens commented:
i agree with both of toygundesigner's comments thank you very much
Michele commented:
Toy guns teach children to "shoot" everyone. I work as a nurse . A 2 year old child was brought in to visit my patient. He aimed a gun at me and said bang. The mother did nothing. The second time he did it I told the parents I didn't like that. The father ( I believe he was the father) told the mother to take the gun away from the kid. She did not. I walked away. The parents are sending a message toy guns are ok and it's ok to "shoot" someone randomly. Did that 14 year old who shot the baby in the stroller while robbing the mother who was out for a walk with her baby play with guns?
Michele commented:
Toy guns teach children to "shoot" everyone. I work as a nurse . A 2 year old child was brought in to visit my patient. He aimed a gun at me and said bang. The mother did nothing. The second time he did it I told the parents I didn't like that. The father ( I believe he was the father) told the mother to take the gun away from the kid. She did not. I walked away. The parents are sending a message toy guns are ok and it's ok to "shoot" someone randomly. Did that 14 year old who shot the baby in the stroller while robbing the mother who was out for a walk with her baby play with guns?
Janet Winter commented:
As long as toy guns look like toys, I don't object to their sale in stores, but I don't think it's appropriate for children to play with guns that look real, because it can endanger them if a trigger-happy adult feels threatened. Like every kid in my neighborhood, I played "Cowboys" with a toy six-shooter when I was growing up in the 1950's. It was a time when America was not at war, and our battles reflected the rather bloodless violence we saw in the movies and on television. Later, in the 1970's, I raised my own kids in a household without toy guns, so they used sticks and their fingers to simulate the toys they were denied, and again it was a reflection of the violence they were exposed to in the entertainment media, including news reports of the wars we were involved in. Now my grandsons play video games in which violence and guns are a constant factor. Our country has been involved more heavily in international conflict, and there seems to be more overt violence in every aspect of entertainment and the news media today. It has to be having an effect on the next generation, but where it will go from here is hard to say.
Mike commented:
I grew up on a farm. Guns were tools - hunting (for survival), killing varmints, and occasionally slaughtering a cow for meat. My mother never let us have toy guns, never a big discussion, just the way it was. We still played cowboys and Indians and made it all up.
Guns are serious business, they are not toys. We got air rifles when we were old enough and we were taught how to use them, then we learned to use and respect real guns. I don’t own a gun today, it is a tool I have no use for, but I know how to use one.
I’d rather parents be like my mother than to have to consider banning them...too much in today's society is gratuitous.
Tony Fiore commented:
IF Meredith Carroll's logic were correct then banning toy cars should prevent future reckless driving.
We have all seen how recklessy children play with thier toy cars. The case should be made that this 'teaches' people that driving like a maniac is acceptable future behaviour.
Statistics back me up. 45,000 deaths a year on Americas roads & highways. As opposed to only 8,000 gun deaths. We all have a higher risk of being killed by a car then a gun.
Obviously, this is the result of childhood conditioning. Of course the Toy industry is to blame.
Please get on my 'Banned wagon', and ban toy cars NOW, to prevent Car violence in the future.
ToyGunDesigner commented:
I grew up playing with toy guns. I own real guns today and I've not killed a single living soul. The idea that playing with toy guns as a child leads to gun violence as an adult is unfounded. Meredith C. Carrol's, opinions are based on her own personal fears, not facts. I also grew up fascinated by all things horror, Frankenstein being my favorite as was millions of kids. To my knowledge I've never heard of one person trying to reanimate a corpse. If we begin to ban toys out of unfounded fears of the future, then we also must ban ideas. Ideas that "we" don't find agreeable. Does any of this sound familiar to anyone?
ToyGunDesigner commented:
I grew up playing with toy guns. I own real guns today and I've not killed a single living soul. The idea that playing with toy guns as a child leads to gun violence as an adult is unfounded. Meredith C. Carrol's, opinions are based on her own personal fears, not facts. I also grew up fascinated by all things horror, Frankenstein being my favorite as was millions of kids. To my knowledge I've never heard of one person trying to reanimate a corpse. If we begin to ban toys out of unfounded fears of the future, then we also must ban ideas. Ideas that "we" don't find agreeable. Does any of this sound familiar to anyone?
Barbara commented:
Banning toy guns isn't the issue or solution, however how guns are presented to children may be. In a semi-recent listing of new products a toy manufacturer had a new toy gun that shot "bullets." It wasn't the bullets that were worrisome it was the copy. The copy referenced being able to fire hundreds of rounds without stopping to reload. So what are we teaching?
A larger question that I haven't heard anyone really ask is how the CPSC (a government agency) can ban bucky balls after a small number of tragic deaths in unsupervised children but our same government allows thousands of people to be killed/murdered with guns. If guns were taken out of the political frame work and placed in a regulatory system like the CPSC, what would that look like? I would hope at the very least we would have smaller clips!
bruce lund commented:
kids should be forced to wear mittens so as to be unable to point their fingers to simulate a gun as shown in the picture. Sticks should be outlawed as too readily used to simulate guns. Police should not be allowed to carry guns except in a gunfight, Hunting and sport shooting should be banned, showing guns on TV should be banned, let me catch my breath before I continue.....
Toynia commented:
I do not believe in gun bans - either real or toy related. The problem lies with the breakdown in family structure. Parents aren't teaching their children to respect life and many parents let video games and movies babysit their children. Violence today is a parenting problem coupled with a society that doesn't promote personal responsibility.
CapGuns.Org commented:
I wholeheartedly disagree with Meredith Carroll's perspective on banning toy guns and I do not believe toy guns have an impact on violent later in life. Millions of kids after WWII grew up playing with toy guns like cap guns for years and school violence was never as bad as it has been in recent years. Just like television, movies and video games, toys need to be supervised so violence does not consume their point of play. Great article and I find this topic fascinating.
