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Awww, aren’t hoplophobic geeks precious? The only problem is, even when they’re all grown up, have moved out of mom’s basement and are out on their own, they’re still a-skeerd of guns. Gizmodo’s Andrew Tarantola has gone all get-offa-my-lawn over something called the FBI Agent Play Set that has him longing for the good old days when he was a kid and toy guns weren’t cool…

It’s funny, when I was a kid there was a huge move away from realistic toy guns—and playing “guns” in general. Now apparently the pendulum has swung back: you can buy your kid a 15-plus-inch toy baton and handcuffs for playing “FBI.”

*sniff* The bad ol’ days (you know, the days right before the good ol’ days when Tarantola was a kid in some idyllic, everyone-gets-a-trophy, gun-free suburb) of playing with toy guns sure seem to be making a comeback, what with these newfangle Airsoft guns and all. What’s next, cowboys and Injuns? Oh, the humanity.

I’m guessing Andy doesn’t have kids. Because if he did, he’d know they like playing cops and robbers. Good guys and bad guys. Rebels and stormtroopers. SWAT team and OWSers. OK, maybe not that one.

It’s all basically the same dress-up game, only with guns. Putting on a silly hat and yelling, “pow, pow” isn’t going to turn little Seth into a bell-tower sniping mass murderer, Andy.

We can understand some reservations he might have about the neighborhood tikes wanting to dress up like feds. But before your panties get too torqued, Andy, take another look at that play set, cuz there isn’t a gun there. Not that the kids won’t want one to complete the outift. Those drawn-on pockets on the the tac vest aren’t there to hold breath mints.

But there’s already plenty of irrational anti-toy gun sentiment to go around and all it does is hurt kids. Part of making sure kids are safe around guns is not fetishizing them or teaching them to be frightened around one. So take a deep cleansing breath and trust us. It’ll be OK.

[h/t saysuncle.com]

 

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39 COMMENTS

  1. Seriously, it Gizmodo. Yeah, they have gadget stuff, but if you visit it at all, you see it is a LOT of extremely liberal biased opinion pieces. Trust me, there is no hope for them, just skip to the next actual gadget article.

      • +1 – after they ruined their site and then called their users idiots for not loving the new, hard to read layout, I stopped reading.

  2. I’m not sure if I would want to encourage my children to play dress up and look like armed bureaucrats. Something about it seems… Wrong. I think I’ll buy child sized BDUs and grease paint for them.

    • How is that any better?

      I’d rather my children (there won’t be any, but theoretically, if I had any) play Batman or some other “outsider” who fights evil doers, not someone who takes orders from the aforementioned corrupt bureaucrats.

        • Hey! That’s not a bad idea!

          “Come on kids! Time to start our monthly home invasion exercise!”

          Seriously, while I know you are being sarcastic what you don’t know is that if you really cared about your family and were willing to use any kind of weapon to protect them, it would be extremely advantageous to get everybody on the same page in understandment of your defense plan. That way the little kiddies know how to respond and act as well as see the seriousness of such a situation.

  3. He doesn’t seem to be a WHOLE lot younger than me. When I was a kid in elementary school we were always playing with toy guns and even learned to make paper guns since the school didn’t like actual toy guns (we even played out resident evil scenarios too lol). This was mid-late 90’s too. So yea, I don’t know just how young he is, but I’m 23 and I grew up with toy guns with my friends (realistic too)…and even grew up around real guns too. My grandparents even took me to a gun show when I was 7. This Guy’s just a pansey…

      • There were no good ol days. You just went from being a naive child to an adult who realizes the world is screwed. It’s what happened to us all, regardless of our personal convictions.

  4. I remember replacing my faithful Mattel Tommy gun with a nice shiny new M-14. (I don’t remember who made it though.) That certainly dates me.

  5. It’s a sad world when you can give a kid a condom but not a toy gun. This whole toy hoplophobia goes back to the sixties, when the slogan “make love, not war” became a way of American life. Before the sixties, Americans were quite capable of doing both.

  6. He looks kinda like Biff Tannen…only, ya know, a pansy.

    Any competent parent should know that if you make a certain thing “forbidden” or “mysterious” hen a kid will just want it more. Then, since you didn’t teach him about it properly, he’ll end up misusing it. So it goes with alcohol, guns, and sex.

    • Years back I shared an apartment with a gal that had a five year old daughter who’d never been around guns. The kid knew I had guns and was immediately curious so I told her that any time she wanted to see one all she had to do was ask and I’d unlock one, make sure it was unloaded and let her hold it after I explained the safety rules. The first month she asked four or five times, second month maybe once, from the third month on the “forbidden” factor was gone and she never asked to see one again. I also took the measure of taking her out and showing her exactly what a 125gr. hollowpoint from a .357 would do to a melon. She felt the concussion, heard the blast, saw the melon disintegrate and forever more knew to respect what a firearm is capable of.

      Parents who don’t like guns seem to forget that any house their child visits might have guns. They owe it to their kids, and any other children their kid may visit, the benefit of exposure to guns and what guns can do. Keeping your child in complete ignorance of firearms is reckless and irresponsible. Take the kid to a range, rent a gun and have an RO give the kid the safety rundown and shoot the gun with the kid around. Time and money well spent to prevent a tragedy.

  7. Anyone remember the really cool six shooters (I think by Mattel) that could shoot plastic bullets from little spring loaded cartridges? You could put “greenie stick-’em caps” on them to make them go bang.

    I wonder if that daffodil Tarantola thinks he’s gonna have high speed internet in the FEMA camps.

  8. God, I’m old.
    When I was a kid we could bring our Dad’s WWII (or, in some cases, WWI) trophy guns to school for show and tell. We had to bring them to the principles office first so that he could make sure they weren’t loaded. And you couldn’t play with them on the playground before school start. If you did, that’s a paddle’n.

  9. I’ve got a staunch pro-2A friend who has forbidden all toy guns in the house. His theory is that he doesn’t want his kids to ever think of a gun as a harmless toy.

    I sort of get it, but don’t agree. I have given my kids all sorts of toy tools, of which their toy guns are a part. They give me the opportunity to teach safety. The kids also go to the range and are used to getting to handle them under supervision. My son who is 10 now has several firearms that are his cleaning responsibility. He also started doing some reloading with me (eyes, ears and supervision required.)

  10. This fellow Andrew Tarantola is the reason why we need the Draft back. I don’t know his life story and don’t want to know, but I’m assuming he’s never been within 100 miles, metaphorically speaking, of the Army. If he had, he might still be a pansy, but he wouldn’t get his panties bunched up this way over toys, because he’d know what the real thing is like.

    For my own part, I’d never buy my kids an FBI Dress Up kit, and can’t imagine why any sane parent, or even J. Edgar Hoover, would do so.

    Hey! How about a TSA Agent Dress Up kit, complete with surgical gloves and anatomy diagram. I’d better patent it, pronto!

    • Actually I grew up on the Presidio army base in SF. My father was a LT Col in the US 6th and both of my grandfathers were full colonels. So yeah, you can take your assumptions and shove, half-wit.

  11. Joan Face: Alright, Mr. Mainway. But surely even you can see the danger in this next costume, which you call Johnny Combat Action Costume. This is an actual working rifle!

    Irwin Mainway: An M-1, yeah.

    Joan Face: I mean, this is a deadly weapon, and you’re selling it to children!

    Irwin Mainway: The ammo’s not included. I mean, this is a very popular item, you know? Give the kid a little something extra! Field glasses, a little helmet there, the gun, you know, it makes ’em feel like a real general! I mean, this product is very popular in Texas and Detroit!

  12. Men are warriors, well most of us are at least predisposed to this. The author of that piece appears to be excluded. We are hard wired that way, it’s the way we’ve survived as a species. Boys have been playing war since the beginning of time. Why? Because they might need the skills some day. Fortunately we live in a society where not everyone needs to fight. That doesn’t mean the natural inclination isn’t there. No one cared when boys practiced with toy swords…

  13. ha, I know this is a years-old article, but I’ve been trying to find a picture of this f*g for a while now. He sure looks like a bitch, in addition to writing like one.

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