Toy Guns

I used em when I was little, loved my western cap guns and holsters, My kids had their share. None of us are serial killers so far :)
Violence comes from within, its an emotional illness triggered by bigger things than a toy gun produces. jmo.

I think if children are educated about guns as a weapon and they know they are real and not toys then it's perfectly fine to allow them to have toys guns. We have not had the request for toy guns though. We will address the issue when it comes up, we didn't just go out and buy toy guns for the kids to play with is my point. If they ask for one I usually distract them with something else. But if it was an honest desire then I would consider it.

MY older son didn't and was much more violent then my now 10 yr old who has all sorts of them. My 10 yo goes into the yard and shoots fierce bears, or deer for dinner, or Siths.
He will get a BB shortly, maybe in 2 years.
My hubby is a MArine, we do not have a gun but he has taught my oldest about gun safety with the BB gun and will do so for my youngest when the time comes.
Knowledge so power, the more they know about firearms the more they know to respect them.
Same goes for power equipment in the garage, workshop, and kitchen.

No, I do not believe that a child will become violent because they use toy guns.

EVERYONE needs to learn respect for guns...my children play with their Nerf guns - but we still expect them to understand that even though it's a toy - it can hurt someone...so they MUST respect them, take care of them...etc.

Kids will use their imagination...and if you restrict them from having a gun - they will, like you said, use their finger or make one....

We don't restrict our kids from things...we've given them SIPS of beer and wine - which they don't like - and I hope they continue to NOT like...but we aren't telling them they "CANNOT HAVE IT" because it draws unnecessary attention to that item....kinda like reverse psychology - tell your teenage daughter how much you dislike her BF and man - she's on him like glue....tell him how much you love him and drops him like hot coal....

No, kids don't become violent playing with toy guns or knives or swords. I almost roll my eyes out of my head when I hear some parent admonish their 4 year old with, "We don't play guns even with sticks or fingers!" oh puke! They actually offer a great aggression outlet for kids and great talking points about how dangerous the real dwal is and how ypu shpuld NEVER touch the real thing (until you're older, with parents, etc.). I grew up with real and toy guns and I'm quite non-violent! We don't even own a real gun right now. Violence in children and adults stems from misplaced
anger, aggression and possible abuses in childhood or psychological
conditions -not toy guns.

****Oh Twice Blessed, I may vomit up my lunch! Guess what -kids need aggression outlets! Mine also pretend to hunt deer, which I'm sure you think is almost as awful as killing a person. You're ridiculous if you think kids playing with toy guns leads to killing people. The kids at Columbine and VA Tech used REAL guns and were horribly disturbed psychologically.
However, I do recall the Colunbine boys being fascinated with Dungeons and Dragons, so you may want to make your son cease and desist the
dragon slaying. I mean, who knows where that could lead? And who are
you to say aliens don't exist? It's an infinite universe out there.

Also, if your idiot neighbor had really known anything about gun safety he would have made damn sure the chamber was empty before he cleaned it!

I lost my little brother in a shooting accident 22 years ago, so I absolutely despise the things. I do not allow my children to play guns EVER. I've had to tell other moms at playdates that they're not allowed to play guns (either with a toy or their fingers). I think toy guns should be taken off the market. I also never drop my kids off at a playdate without checking to see if they have a real gun. People say you can teach your kids to respect the guns yadda, yadda, yadda, but the 10 yr old kid who shot my brother had taken a gun safety class and even that didn't prevent him from touching the gun, pointing the gun, pulling the trigger etc... I think playing with toy guns, playing video games or watching TV shows with shooting definitely will desensitize them to the real power of guns. It also glamorizes it. It's similar to the shows that are marketed towards tweens that glamorize sex. I don't let my daughter watch those shows because I don't want her to think it's OK or normal for 15-16 year-olds to have sex.

Hi jen-

I am not a fan of guns...but when my eldest boys were younger...and took a bite out of toast at breakfast to 'make' guns and 'pow pow' at each other...I just **sighed**

I am with grandma T...as long as they LOOK like toys...not so much of an issue...but some 'toys' look scarily real...in fact I seem to remember a news story where police mis took a toy gun for real.

A healthy respect for guns is a good thing...as is a locked gun case for the 'real deal'

Best luck!
Michele/cat

Yes, my four-year-old daughter has toy guns (and swords) and she loves them!! As long as they understand that in reality, it's not OK to shoot someone or stab them with a sword (which isn't hard to teach...) then it's fine.

Here is a situation that bothered me. When my daughter was just a toddler/preschooler, there would be neighbor boys who would come around with toy squirtguns and point them at her. Doesn't that seem awful? So if your kid is going to have guns, make sure they know it's only fair to play with kids who also have weapons.

Funny, my father was a gun collector and my sister and I were taught gun safety and how to shoot at a very early age. I got a BB gun for a Christmas present one year (and no, didn't put my eye out LOL)

But I do not own one and when my son was little would not buy him a toy gun. So, he "made" guns out of leggos, sticks, paper towel holders - pretty much anything.

I decided it was genetic. LOL He had never been around guns, I monitored what he watched on TV, but yet, the little boy fascination with guns was ever present.

I don't think toy guns turn a child violent. But, I do think that it can make guns seem "safe" if children are not taught the difference between real guns and toy ones. That was one thing I did make very clear to my son - that guns are not toys - that if he ever was near a real gun to never touch it and go find an adult.

He is 15 now, and I let him play the "war" games on the PS3, so now he has a vocabulary and knowledge of all kinds of guns. Yet, he still can't shoot a real gun. There is a new firing range in my area, that teaches gun safety and has guns that you can use on the range. I think I may take him there for a lesson.

Interesting question, Thanks
God Bless

Using a toy gun is also to get the bad guys not be violent and aggressive.

To the PPer sorry about your brother :( but I don't blame toy guns I blame his parents for allowing access to a loaded real gun.

both of mine played/plays with guns. My oldest is 22 and non violent but does know when it is necessary to shoot in defense. Someone we don't know coming in the house at 2am uninvited. He understand they aren't for robberies or to shoot someone who called you a name. He also understands it is ok to use a gun for food purposes. Even though he won't hunt he thinks it is cruel. Mine is not a fighter. has never been arrested and all that jazz.

While it's true that kids will turn anything into a toy gun, I don't think it means that we should just then go out and buy them toy guns. I think water pistols are fine because they clearly look like toys while some toy guns are so realistic looking it's scary. Most of us turned out okay but then most of us don't have aggressive violent tendencies. There's so much more to biology and human development that I don't think one can blame it all on a toy. But violent video games would concern me more.

I've been thinking the same thing about Barbies lately, since my daughter discovered Barbie dolls at other girls' homes on play dates and seems fascinated by them (she's almost 4). I've been trying to avoid the whole Barbie scene, so she doesn't have any now and I was never into them as a kid myself. But now I'm wondering if it would be so bad if she got a Barbie doll for her birthday.

Playing with guns doesn't make a child violent any more that playing with plates and silverware makes a child fat.

My father played with guns. My uncle played with guns. My brother and I played with guns. None of us turned out to be violent, except when we were in uniform faced by and enemy shooting at us.

Good luck to you and yours.

Boys, and most kids for that matter, make guns out of sticks, rocks, vacuum pieces, etc... It's part of make believe play, shooting bad guys, being Darth Vader.

Thinking back to my childhood my brother and I loved cap guns, and neither of us are violent. I'm not a big fan of young children playing games like Modern Warfare, but a cap gun, water gun or something of that sort is ok in my eyes.

My husband and I are very 'aware' of guns. We are both former military, and so we feel a strong sense of responsibility to teach our son that Guns Are Not Toys.

Our son is four and interested in 'guns', but he still doesn't understand them. We bought him a 'squirt gun', and made sure it was in an animal shape for both his own safety and because we will not give him a gun-shaped toy to play with.

Reading a segment of Bruno Bettelheim's "A Good Enough Parent" taught me that he *is* going to have times in his life when it's important for him to play in this more aggressive sort of way, to channel his feelings. We feel more comfortable with encouraging knight/dragon play than we do just shoot'em up bang bang play, and will likely get him a wooden sword to 'battle the dragon' with.

I think guns only have one way to play: shooting. There's nothing else to do with them. I realize the same could be said for swords. However, there's something less immediate about a sword. Kids also understand getting a cut, because that's happened to them before at some point in their lives. Getting shot? Not even relatable.

Lastly, a former boyfriend of mine was a police officer. He ended up asking a mentally ill person to drop their weapon repeatedly, and when the person aimed the weapon at him, he shot the suspect and killed them. Toy gun.

So, for me it's not a question of 'we all turned out okay' (we say that, because we are alive, right? the dead do not protest posts like this, and those children who have shot siblings or other youngsters, thinking it was okay to play with guns and then stumbling onto their parent's real weapon...sad), it's simply a matter of awareness. The world has changed. I used to play cap-guns too. I've just become very aware that in a world where police DO shoot people with toy guns and where more parents don't use more discretion in 'what kind' of gun play happens, we've decided to try to focus our son in a different direction. Frankly, some of the pretend play I see with older kids and guns does tend to "sound" more mean and certainly more violent than the way my siblings and I played with toy guns. A small six-shooter with a roll of caps is vastly different, in my opinion, from a semi-automatic with pretend bandoliers of ammo. Western shoot-out get-the-bad-guy is one thing.(and we were only given caps on camping trips, by the way.) Massive "mow them down" Rambo style because EVERYONE is the bad guy is quite another game. I see the looks on some children's faces when they play this way and they look quite mean. This isn't what I want for my child. He's still a child.

.

Little kids in the most harmonious of households will find a stick somewhere and pow-pow-pow with it.
I do not believe that kids will become violent if they play with toy guns. I have a bucket of squirt guns on my porch. I play with them too.
I don't have real weapons in my home. They make me nervous with kids around, but I have to say that I was taught to shoot as a young kid and I'm a pretty good shot. Marksmanship is included in Olympic events. It doesn't have to be about violence.
Little kids will use their imaginations, and yes, their own fingers.
It's not an automatic precursor to violence.

Just my opinion.

No I don't think toy guns will make a child violent.

I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, I’m more worried about violent video games than playing cops and robbers with toy guns (I did it as a child). Water guns are specially fun this time of year.
The only thing I would suggest is to use toy guns that look like toys (orange, green, etc.) and not like real guns and talk to your son about not playing with guns that look “real”, specially at someone else’s home.
Have fun!

I think it has more to do with your values, etc. than what toys you provide. My brother used to bite a slice of cheese into the shape of a gun and chase me around with it. A couple little boys my son plays with will build big elaborate "machine guns" out of pipe fittings. I think it's a sign of a big imagination!

Personally I think that toy guns are fine. I'm in the Army so talk about weapons is a pretty common conversation in our house. We make sure to explain that you don't point the guns at people. I think that these days there are so many other influences out there that we need to focus on toy guns is at the bottom of the worry list

My boys have a weapons trunk! Star Wars blasters, Nerf everything...you name it, they have it!

My oldest loves playing army...

~So to answer your question: No, I do not think children become violent if he/she plays with toy guns.