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By Frederick Rivara, University of Washington and Laura Prater, University of Washington

[Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to [email protected].]

Why don’t parents like their kids to play with fake guns? – Henry, age 11, Somerville, Massachusetts

A major reason parents don’t like kids to play with pretend guns is they’re afraid you’ll get hurt.

It can be hard for others to tell if a gun is real or just a toy. While you and your friends might be able to tell it’s a harmless game, others won’t be so sure. Someone could mistake your toy gun for a real gun, see you as a threat and try to defend themselves, hurting you in the process.

Hundreds of children die because of gun violence each year in the United States. Because of these numbers, people like us – a pediatrician who has worked on firearm violence for 40 years and a firearm injury prevention researcher – are very concerned about firearms that are not stored properly and the injuries they can cause.

Some of the toy guns available for kids and parents to buy look very much like real guns, including pistols and rifles. Because these toys look so real, kids who come across a real gun may not realize it’s dangerous and not a toy. They may pick it up, fiddle around with it, point it at a friend or themselves and pull the trigger. More than 100 children are killed each year in the U.S. because they or a friend were handling a gun that unintentionally went off.

Terrifying, isn’t it? (Shutterstock)

Violent games encourage violence

Playing with toy guns can also affect the way you interact with the world and think about how to solve problems. Researchers have found that just seeing weapons can make people act more aggressively – this is called the weapons effect, and it applies to toy guns.

After watching a movie that contains a lot of gun violence, kids tend to be more interested in playing with guns, too. These are reasons parents may want to limit kids’ exposure to movies and TV shows that feature guns and prefer for kids to play with nonweapon toys.

Playing games that involve violence can make you more comfortable with violence and aggression. Kids can even become more violent themselves. Researchers have found that kids who play a lot of violent video games tend to show more signs of aggression than those who don’t play them.

We worry that kids who play a lot of shooting video games and with toy guns will believe that settling arguments with violence and guns is the right thing to do, when there are more constructive ways to resolve disputes.

Real guns are not toys

Adults who have firearms at home have a responsibility to keep them locked up and to prevent anyone from inappropriately accessing and using them. But some people who have firearms don’t lock them up. Or they keep them loaded with ammunition, which is very unsafe. It is always best to treat a gun as if it is real and loaded.

What should kids do if they find a firearm in their home or at a friend’s? The answer is very simple: Do not touch it. Leave it alone and tell an adult – even if you think it may be a toy. Checking it out yourself may cause the gun to go off accidentally and hurt someone if it turns out to be real.

The same is true at school. If you find a gun or hear classmates talking about a firearm, tell a teacher. Even if you worry your friends will get mad, telling a teacher could help prevent a serious or even deadly injury.

Parents who are responsible gun owners will teach their children about gun safety and how to handle and shoot them safely. But if you’re a school-age kid, you should never handle a gun by yourself.

Playing with or handling guns – real or fake – is dangerous and can be deadly.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to [email protected]. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.The Conversation

 

Frederick Rivara, Professor of Pediatrics, School of Medicine, University of Washington and Laura Prater, Research Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, School of Medicine, University of Washington.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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97 COMMENTS

  1. Science agrees: kids are impressionable, easily influenced and look to adults for behavioral cues. Which is why you shouldn’t expose them to certain toys, certain shows, certain music, certain texts or certain beliefs.

    Except when it comes to grooming of course. That just helps them to realize the transitional human they were always meant to be. Oh, and booze and weed of course. Those are useful tools during the transitory time.

    • Forcing the kid to get an old man haircut is just wrong. If the child is clean, he – she is groomed. Maybe not the way you want, but he is groomed. Something permanent, like piercings and/or tattoos is different. If the child has clean clothes on and takes some pride in his/her appearance, that is what matters.
      Forcing military haircuts is not right

      • Ever had any sons? No forcing involved. By 2yr you start taking the (and you) for regular haircuts. Same as wiping your butt when done. No spitting on the sidewalk or picking your nose. Show/teach them how to act like a civilized adult (and you can’t wait until they are 12yr to start).

        And – make sure your daughters understand that one of her primary roles in life is to “expect” civilized adult behavior from those males she allows around her.

        Both learn to “shoot straight and speak the truth” from a young age. (wow $65 on Amazon).

    • It was my parents not letting me have toy guns is what got me interested in real guns. Initially at a historic level but when I was legally an adult I got my license and started competitive target shooting.

      My son has known I’ve had guns since he was 2. The guns were locked in a safe but if he wanted to look at them, he just had to ask. Now he competes with me on the weekends and has learned enough to advise other new shooters.

      • Toy guns (and the adults that provided them) taught me the basics of gun safety and ballistics – and also the difference between toy guns and the real thing. Result – zero playing when using the real thing.

      • “It was my parents not letting me have toy guns is what got me interested in real guns.”

        It’s natural for kids to rebel against their parents beliefs. Examples like preacher daughters getting knocked-up seems to confirm this. Or, kids of cops who end up with criminal records because they wanted to be seen as ‘cool’ to the other kids at school.

        Couple that with the immense popularity of first-person shooter video games, we are flat-out winning that culture war against the Leftist Scum ™, all because of their parents bat-shit-crazy hatred of guns and us… 🙂

  2. Maybe they should advocate for the NRA’s Edie the Eagle program instead of just the normal talking points of not having a firearm in the first place.

    • This is what burns me when supposedly smart people talk about this stuff – why are we still letting the same people decide what the next step should be? Everything they’ve implemented has been a failure, even *by their own definition*.

      Can’t anybody suggest some education and reasonable (meaning less restricted) school gun rules?

    • that EddieEagle programme is lousey.

      TEACH the children how to properly handle and use firearms and there will not be problems. This business of telling them to run away scared and tell an adult is NOT the best practice. What happens after the kid running to tell someone leaves the scene and one of the other kids picks up the gun? NO ONE KNOWS.

      By the time a child is six or seven years old he SHOULD be able to idnetify the fact itIS a firearm and know how to safe and clear the basic types. Once safed and cleared, then take it with him and surrender it to a KNOWN and RESPONSIBLE adult.

      • “TEACH the children how to properly handle and use firearms and there will not be problems.”
        We teach people how to drive properly, and we still have problems with idiots who drive improperly.
        Often overlooked is human nature, which, in some humans, includes a perverse tendancy to behave badly, for any of several reasons, including a desire to be evil, or to commit suicide.
        Education is wonderful, but unfortunately, not a universal panacea.
        What is too often forgotten is that even if we TEACH people that there are consequences for their actions, there will always be some people who will commit evil actions despite the consequences. (An example: the Nashville school shooter plainly knew that death would be a consequence of their action, and did it anyway.)

      • Agree on the principle of teaching them to use instead of be afraid, but the EE program is a foot in the door. I don’t believe it’s intended to be anything other than non-controversial safety tips.

  3. Meanwhile in a nation and a world with guns everywhere, the idea is to make children (soon to grow to adulthood) completely ignorant of these things in order to cause even more accidental shootings.

      • Perverts, child molesters, kidnappers and the like agree…Kids should not be anywhere around guns…Parents should set an example for the little tykes and surrender their Guns.
        If you are stupid enough to buy into what is backdoor Gun Control disguised as concern for children then by all accounts you are too stupid to own a firearm, lawnmower, motor vehicle, swimming pool, dog, cat, livestock, blender, stove, etc.

  4. What a G O O F. We played army or war( never cowboys & Indians) as a kid in the 50’s & 60’s. No criminals that I know of!

    • still a pretty good collector market for those old cap guns…managed to find a few I had as a kid…takes you back to a more innocent time when violence was just a fantasy….

    • My father had guns in the house and we were forbidden to touch them without permission. He always permitted curiosity as he supervised. We obeyed and learned to respect others’ things. I am a Boomer.

    • oh WE also played Cowoys and Indians and Pirates too. Fifties and sixties. If we could not find or make anything that would fling something we’d point fingers and say BANG and pretend.

  6. They are full of democrat crap, we are in our mid 60’s and all of us played with toy guns when we were small and none of us are killers, and when we were young we learned to shoot REAL guns in a Christian summer camp every year. Now we all carry 24/7 and believe it or not we are still not killer’s. What a bunch of whimp’s out there.

    • they’re full of excuses for cultural change…always searching for something that deflects from the reality they are responsible for…

  7. When conservatives, preachers and pols, said that video game violence and movies had a negative impact on kids the left ridiculed them and shouted them down.

    Looks like the left has adopted conservative arguements.

    • Hey Jethro you are a moron because Japan has more kids addicted to violent video games than any other nation and they do not go out and commit mass murder like our kids do. Try again Hill Jack , once again you made a complete fool of yourself.

        • Hey Shire did you even bother to read that list.

          And my praising Japanese kids is certainly not racist. Your reading comprehension is at the 4th grade level.

        • Holy shit you’re stupid and racist.

          Sounds about right but you forgot nonsensical and repetitive… Kind of like ummmmmm… Oh yeah, like an autistic child, sticking their two cents worth into something they obviously know nothing about and always loudly repeating the same tired drivel…

        • Pokemon, Kirby and Splatoon are totally violent games I suppose.
          Call of Duty is on the list. Way down at #74.

      • You are correct but when they do go off they do it right, 44 killed by arson, 19 stabbed to death, 36 killed when a guy spays them with flammable liquid and lights it… Average is about 1000 murders a year not bad for 125 million people… Seems they prefer the up close and personal touch in The Land of the Rising Sun… Also children are raised to respect and obey their elders something that passed away long ago in this country… But you go ahead a keep blaming guns instead of the government and the destruction of the two parent nuclear family…

      • dacian. Do you even read the gibberish you post? You’ve proven you’re low iq and uneducated. But haven’t you ever thought, just once, about bettering yourself?

        It is truly sad to see mental illness control a young mans life to the extent yours has.

      • Why dont you take your chopsticks and move to Japan since its such a great place to live, instead of just yammering on about it all the time?

        Maybe its just their subservient ish culture that lends itself to less violence. If thats even true.

        • take your chopsticks and move to Japan since its such a great place to live

          Can’t, there’s no room, people are already living on top of one another, half of them sleep while the other half walks around or works and they switch out every 12 hours, you still must go with the flow when you are on the street because there are so many people… A country 1/26th the size of the US (about equal to the Eastern seaboard states excluding NY, PA, Ga) with a population of a little more than 1/3rd of the US (approximately 123 million)…

      • Ever been to Japan? Any attempts on your part to locate anything lethal with which to commit such mass murder?

        What a maroon!!!!! But we knew that the nanosecond we saw that mad cartoon.

      • Culture has an immense effect on many aspects of behavior.
        The cultures of Japan and the US are very different, so different behaviors are to be expected.
        To try to pick only one difference, and then compare and contrast one specific behavior based on that one difference, is invalid.

    • Conservatives no longer control entertainment in general. The Left does. And the Left wants the $$$. But the Left doesn’t want the morality that goes along with it..

      • btw

        The Left wants children disarmed so the can molest them. Groom them. Destroy their childhood. And in the end create children who murder on command. The Khmer Rouge in Cambodia was mostly made up of 14 year olds. Who helped to murder millions of people, with adult leadership.

        They especially don’t want parents who give their children a “toy gun”. And train their kids on how to use it responsibly. Because then that kid might use that little toy gun to defend themselves with it.

        And demonstrate the ability for independent thinking and decision making. All provided by their parents upbringing. Which is why the Left hates the traditional family so much.

        “10-year-old Arizonan uses Airgun in Self Defense”

        https://www.ammoland.com/2022/05/10-year-old-arizonan-uses-airgun-in-self-defense/#axzz7UKLrCtBb

        • That’s in the same category as another one I read, I believe on Ammoland a few years back.
          Seems a mom and a few kids were home alone one afternoon, some dirtbag busted into the house and shoved Mom into the kitchen where he picked up a rather large knife and used it to force her up against the counter. Eleven year old Son instantly decided he was having none of it, ran upstairs, fetched his Daisey lever action BB gun, flew back down and ran into the kitchen. He started pumpint those BB’s into the face of the dirtbag. After stopping a fair number of these projectiles he made an informed decision and exitd the scene. Seems he presented himself at a local hospital not long after his unplanned shellacking from the ‘kid” (who was far more a MAN than he was). Cops caught up with him and arrested/charged him. Great kid. Saw the situation, instantly and correctly analised it, took decisive and effective action quickly, and ended the threat/danger to his Mum. Need a few hundred thousand more kids like that randomly distributed about the nation.

  8. I don’t know about your kids, Prater and Rivera, but my daughter knows the difference between her supersoaker and her Buck Mark.

  10. For some reason i’m not worried that the neighborhood kids playing with a nerf guns and super soakers are going to become killers.

    This reminds me. Summer break for the school kids is coming up and I need to load up a few hundred more 30 round magazines for storage so I need to hire those kids again to load them for me and let them make a few bucks for summer. Maybe they will use the money to buy another nerf gun.

    • do all these kids doing your loading jobs (that sounds dirty lol) handle firearms regularly?
      I’m actually having a little trouble imagining the reasons behind owning hundreds of magazines, can you elaborate?
      how many rounds to load for what money unit?
      Do your thing, but I can’t picture owning more than one or two dozen magazines of your preferred firearm not being a hoarding/paranoid situation.

      • but I can’t picture owning more than one or two dozen magazines of your preferred firearm

        Really??

  12. Unless the kids are retarded or too young for either they would also know the difference and can easily learn to be safe with either. If that is not the case the parents would be responsible for locking things up.

  14. Forcing the kid to get an old man haircut is just wrong. If the child is clean, he – she is groomed. Maybe not the way you want, but he is groomed. Something permanent, like piercings and/or tattoos is different. If the child has clean clothes on and takes some pride in his/her appearance, that is what matters.
    Forcing military haircuts on kids is not right.

  15. So all of us who grew up watching Gunsmoke or Have Gun Will Travel, etc. should have grown up to be mass murderers. We played Army or cowboys and indians. We had cap guns and air rifles from early on. We learned to shoot real rifles around age 10. Of course many of us also enlisted or were drafted into the military and were cured of any desire to go looking for trouble.
    We watched violent cartoons like the Looney Tunes. Don’t remember anyone dropping an anvil from a high wire or ladder on someone.
    Of course most of us could also read, write and balance a check book by the time we made it through 8th grade. And we knew which bathroom we should use or which locker room we used in PE class.
    Sorry kiddies, guns, or swords don’t cause violence. Playing rough and tumble games actually gives boys an outlet for the natural aggressive tendencies young males have.
    Toss in the fact many of us growing up a generation or 2 ago had chores or small jobs like lawn mowing or delivering papers. Those of us who grew up in rural areas worked in our parents small business or on the farm.
    Too much free time, no responsibility, and social media foolishness likely does more damage than playing with toy guns ever wiould.

    • getting shot with a BB gun will bring home the reality that there are pretend guns and then there are guns that can actually hurt you…a painful lesson a lot of us learned early…..

    • It would be hard to list the TV shows I saw that had violent content while I was growing up in the 70s and 80s. Some of the list would be:

      Rat Patrol
      Doctor Who
      The Goodies
      Hawaii Five-O
      The Streets of San Francisco
      The New Avengers
      Battlestar Galactica
      Buck Roger’s
      Star Trek
      Daniel Boone

      and so many more. But it was in context of the stories.

      • Staeside, realistic nightly primetime violence began latest ’50s

        The modern era of random school shootings began in ’66.

        Monkey see, monkey do.

        1900: all narcotics and explosives were sold over the counter, as were automatic handguns, machineguns, and short barrel guns. The modern assault weapon became available in 1905.

        No TV. School violence very rare, and not random. NO REALISTIC VIOLENT IMAGERY.

        Monkey didn’t.

      • “Johnny Quest” was conceived and created for an adult audience. It was considered adult level cartoon entertainment in the early 1960s. It was made for adults in mind not children. And people were being murdered in that cartoon. People were being shot to death in that cartoon. But it was violence for the for the early sixties. It wasn’t graphic.

        And it later became a favorite for Saturday morning cartoons. The “Herculoids”. “Space Ghost”. All adventure cartoons with their own level of violence, destruction, and death. They were Morality Tales. All favorites of mine.

        All of them would be considered not extreme enough for the “Adult Swim” channel cartoon audience. “Archer” they are not. Not even close.

        • Torture, alcoholism, beatings, and shootings were common in Herge’s Tintin series, which I read a lot of when I was young.

          dacian would be in a foaming frenzy if he read Tintin in the Land of the Soviets.

    • . Don’t remember anyone dropping an anvil from a high wire or ladder on someone.

      Or going all Yosemite Sam in the middle of Main Street…

      • I did forget the Warner Brothers cartoons in my list. I managed to get a 4 DVD set of them. Watched them with my son when he was younger.

      • I knew a kid tried to use an umbrella as a parachute. Broke his arm.

        Definite case of imitative behavior.

    • Much of what you describe here has been made illegal by our barmy government. Kids can’t work under sixteen years of age, not even on the family farm or picking berries for a farmer. I ran my own housepainting business when I was fifteen. Got paid and all. Never had a license as a contractor either. Couldn’t drive so I rode my bike to the jobs. I’ve heard in some states kids under sixteen can’t even operate farm equipment in their own land. My Dad ran the wagon and team and the loader during haying season..he was to puny to buck the hay up onto the wagon so they told him to drive it. Got his car driving license in his 12th birthday, legal and all (he says it cost a quarter!!! and took five minutes). When he was fourteen the school bought a bus, and he was the driver. My Mom was baking bread in the wood and coal cookstove at home using flour from broken bags her Dad would bring home fro wiork. Then she put the finished loaves, unwrapped, into her little Rdio Flyer wagon and took them into town where she sold them on the streets to anyone who would give her a nickel for them. No “health deartment” papers, inspections, etc, and she was only nine when she started doing that. Everyone was happy to get fresh tasty bread so cheap. And their family sure needed the extra cash. They lived out on the edge of town, ‘boes would drop off the train as it slowed coming into towh, their place was “marked’ so they always had extra mouths to feed from what they had. The men would be happy to help out with chores, building fence, splitting stovewood,etc.These days not even adults can do that in exchange for food… that is “working” these days, and the state employment nutjobs will get their knickers all beknotted, come round and fine the “employer” and all such manner of insanity.

      Maybe the whole charade will be unmasked soon and we can begin getting back to what real life used to be.. kids and all.

  16. “Academics Want Kids to Know That Toy Guns are Dangerous and Could Turn Them Into Violent Killers”
    lets fix that shall we:
    “The smartest people in the room in the real world know that the transgender movement is dangerous and it is in the process of turning kids into violent killers”
    there…

    • Study: ‘Transgender’ Youth at Highest Risk for Violent Radicalization
      SPENCER LINDQUIST 28 Mar 20231,611
      A 2022 study found that youth who identify as transgender are at the highest risk of “violent radicalization.”
      breitbart dot com

      • antifa’s new recruiting pool?

        Even then they will be among the very minor faction known as the rainbow coalition.

    • its one thing to buy a gun for protection…quite another to use that gun to make others share your pain and misery….has “Rainbow Reload” claimed its first victims?

  17. I’d like to know when academics are going to look at “Bad Parenting” as the problem. I was raised in a very democrat left leaning household, but that was in the 70’s and 80’s. By todays standards, my parents would be considered doctrinaire republicans. I was allowed to play with all kinds of toy guns, and yet…somehow, I managed to not think it was a “gateway toy”.

  18. My son knew the four rules from about 4 years old. Came to the range with me from about 5 or 6, did safety course and was shooting pistol competitions by 12 in Australia.

    He is now 33, qualified tradesman, employed etc.

    Somehow neither of us are violent criminals. Proper parenting works better than any woke ideology.

  20. “Hundreds of children die because of gun violence each year in the United States. Because of these numbers, people like us – a pediatrician who has worked on firearm violence for 40 years and a firearm injury prevention researcher – are very concerned about firearms that are not stored properly and the injuries they can cause.”

    being concerned about this is noble. putting forth false information to justify it is not so noble.

    the information linked to justify “Hundreds of children die because of gun violence each year…” includes people who are not children and includes people who are 18 and 19 year olds, outside the area of a pediatrician care by the way,
    which by government standards are counted as adults and these mostly were gang members deliberating placing their selves in gun violence situations to mostly commit crimes.

    • and hundreds of them are in large democrat raped cities where various “categories” of individuals do things like randomly fire bullets from moving cars as they drive down the streets, violent gang actions in city parks, buses, etc, “heaters” are bougth and sold on the street, no FFL, no background check, no record, no traceability, and when that rare event (one or more actually being takn into custody by the local coppers) the democratic party Soros funded/backed DA’s just let the murders out of jail until their trial, which is most often a joke called a “plea bargain” reducing charges down to nothing of note.
      This UW “pediatrician needs to get out and about more often and see what is REALLY going on behond the brick walls where he hides himself.

  21. These left-wing academics wouldn’t have a job. And the thousands upon thousands of others like them. Would be unemployed. If people had followed the words of President Eisenhower. When he warned us of the dangers of “Education Industrial Complex”.

    He said federal education spending was just as Dangerous a threat to the Republic. As the overspending on the military was a threat to the Republic.

  22. OK , THEN CAR WILL CAUSE ROAD RAGE ALSO .
    SO NO DRIVERS LICENCE FOR YA YOUNG PEOPLE . THERE NOW
    WAIT THEY USE A GUN TO HI JACK A CAR TO DRIVE .. UUUH …

  23. As children, my peers and I played with cap guns. We used to reenact climactic scenes from western or police TV shows or movies. We knew it was fantasy, not reality, and we were reluctant to play the bad guys even though they were necessary. The experience hasn’t turned me into a murderer and, as far as I know, the same is true of my peers.

  24. “academics” and dacian – by definition are morons so just ignore them. They will have a tantrum and then, HOPEFULLY, go away.

  25. When I was a kid my dad (a real father, was there for me, guided me ,taught me etc) didn’t like the plastic guns sold in the toy stores. He did like guns though and had a bunch in a rack in his locked (TV room as he called it). We could go look @ them anytime he was in there smoking his cigar’s and having a few belts of Fleishman’s (nasty stuff).. He would make sure they were unloaded and we didn’t have sticky ice cream hands before we touched/handled them. When we were older he MADE us all guns out of scrap wood he had from side jobs, bought dowel’s for the barrels taught us how to use his ‘jig’ saw to cut the stocks, drill holes to attach the ‘barrels’ so we wouldn’t split the wood etc etc. He told us we didn’t need store bought Jap Junk that made noises for you, ‘Make your own sounds’ …we did! It was great! Then when we dropped the guns (because we were shot and killed (often)..who didn’t like fake dyeing ? making all grotesque sounds, tongue hanging out ahhhhhhhhhh! It was so cool, anyway we dropped the guns 6-7 million times, we broke the barrels off, wore the industrial gray paint down to the bare wood he would redo them (and show us how to do that too). I forget what age I was then but pretty young to use power tools but if taught right/supervised you don’t think it’s ‘wrong’ or ‘inappropriate’. It’s not like he said HERE! figure it out for yourselves.
    These stoopid academic’s phuck up more kids and adults then they help, Look @ the way that ‘tranny’ acted like she-it! was rambo! Holy s—! What a nut-bar!. And the parents ‘Had NO idea!’ Great job folks…Parent: ‘What’s in the red duffel you are carrying?’…No answer from their kid…oh ok, and let them go on it’s way…Good Job. If you are going to have a child, you must be prepared to nurture that child. Not just let them ‘social media’ themselves through life! There is a lot of sick shit out there and if you are not paying attention to them they learn on their own all sorts of weird stuff.
    Then as I got older we learned to shoot the real guns. Mostly .22’s in that same basement as his TV room. This is in Queen’s NY folk’s (1970’s) He built a huge (to me) target stuffed two mattresses in it and dammit if it didn’t stop most of the boolit’s. we later learned that when we destroyed the stuffing some rounds went into our pool table in the family room (Mom was pissed!) Once again, It was GREAT fun! Lotsa laughs and didn’t want to go off and murder Ben the Pizza man down on Jamaica avenue! Nope, (2) slices and a coke for a Buck!, we became fast friends and he wasn’t a pedo! We did have a neighbor who was ‘very weird’ and loved giving kids candy. I knew enough even back then he wasn’t cool and told my Dad about him and he had a little ‘talk’ with him…he all of a sudden moved out of the neighborhood (FAST!). My father, WW2 vet, almost killed by a pack-mule that fell of a cliff above him in the CBI (China, Burma, India), bayonetted in the gut by a (censored) Japanese soldier, he called it a really deep scratch (scar was wicked looking)! He wasn’t father of the year, he drank too much when the nightmares came and he worked a lot (all the fathers did) but my Mom was home when he worked (NYC Morgue driver) and she worked when he was off (a nurse) so we were never ‘latch key kids’.
    It wasn’t Ozzie and Harriet type stuff but all three kids grew up OK. If we had any failings later on it was on us!. As it should be. No hand holding after 16-17, Survive a nasty High School experience almost died! got a job at the local beer distributor at 18, Bulked up physically after 6 months, joined an Armored Car company at 18.5 and the rest is history ! Cool!.

    • This may be real but this feels like someone’s idea of nostalgic reality like how transgender women (with penis/XY) imagines how women really behave.

  26. I wonder if it coincided with prayer being banned in schools. At least the school shootings i mean

  27. Now let’s examine the breakdown of the family unit, and the degradation of society. Nah, let’s just eradicate toy guns…

  28. “Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? ”
    Well don’t ask us because we’re obviously complete morons.

  30. Foolishness! I grew up on 25 acres of Indiana woods.
    Never left the house without my trusty Crossman air rifle.
    Hundreds of tin cans gave there lives…so to speak.
    Fifty -five years later I have not murdered or harmed a soul.
    I suppose I am just one of millions of such people.
    I think perhaps these ” academics” are wrong.

  31. Watch war movies as a kid.
    Had toy guns.
    Played “war,” with the neighborhood kids.
    Have yet to commit a mass shooting.
    But then again, I am a straight white male.

  32. This article is a perfect example of why one should not ask an “expert” about any subject, but ask someone who really knows about the subject.

    As for Eddie Eagle, I don’t like the idea of “run away.” Why do they need to run? Also, the “experts” in the article parrot Eddie Eagle when they say, “What should kids do if they find a firearm in their home or at a friend’s? The answer is very simple: Do not touch it. Leave it alone and tell an adult – even if you think it may be a toy.”

  33. We all had toy guns when I was a kid and there were no mass shootings. Maybe the author has it backwards. When toy guns became demonized, that’s when the mass shootings began.

  35. How are young children going to cope when they run into ferals out there in our shiny new modern society if nobody teaches them to recognize and deal with real danger?

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