Do you allow kids to point toy guns at people?

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Captains1911

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This is something I've been struggling with for sometime. I don't have kids, by my girlfriend has two boys, and she lives with her sister who has two girls. There's a few toy guns along with several nurf guns in the house that they often run around playing with, pointing at each other and whatnot as kids do. This creates a conflict for me, as it obviousy violates everything you teach regarding firearm safety. But they are just toys, so this doesn't really apply, but the idea and the habit still bothers me. How could they have those enjoyable nerf guns wars though without pointing them at each other? And how is this any different than kids and adults playing airsoft and paintball? I'm the last person who wants to ruin all the fun, but my involvement and passion for guns and safety makes me look at this differently. I'm sure I did the same with toys when I was a youngster, however my parents weren't gun people so it was much easier to separate the two.

So how do you parents handle this? Do you allow your children to point toy guns at people? I'd imagine those parents who aren't into shooting and guns probably have a different opinion on this than those who do. Is there a certain age limit where things change, like when they become old enough to shoot real guns they are no longer allowed to play with toy ones?
 
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My little brothers (9 and 12 years old) and I have Nerf gun battles all the time. IMO, the thing to do is teach kids the difference between toys and real guns. Nerf guns are pretty obviously toys anyway. Something like airsoft guns I'd reserve for older, more mature kids. And make sure the orange tips stay on them.
 
There is no point to toys like NERF guns if you can't point and shoot them at people.

Are you also considering the banishment of any and all video games where people are shot?
 
My 3 year old son doesn't have any toy guns that actually fire any kind of projectile such as nerf guns and whatnot. His toy guns are fairly realistic, and one of them is actually a permanently disabled Erma .25ACP pistol. He "practices" just like his daddy does - by drawing from his little holster and aiming at his special piece of painter's tape on the wall just like me. While we're practicing, we talk about being safe, the 4 rules and all that.

Eventually I'm sure we (or another family member) will get him a nerf gun or something like that - When the time comes, I will be certain to teach him the difference between his nerf guns that he CAN point at people, and his "real" guns that he can NOT point at anyone. We are working on him with discerning the difference between a "bad guy" and a "good guy" still, but he's not quite to that point fully yet, so we stick to painter's tape on the wall.
 
When I was a kid

We all ran around playing army or cowboys and Indians (how politically incorrect!) so playing with guns that was just normal for us. But there did come a time when I went into scoutting that I was taught the difference between real and toy.

If you have to opportunity and your relatives allow it, take the kids down to the local range and teach them about guns. But make sure the ONLY time you are demonstrating anything about a REAL firearm you are doing it at an approved shooting range.

I read an article that stated the surroundings will imprint with the lesson. In other words if you show them your gun (real) in the family living room, that room is associated with the firearm and so the kids will think it's okay to have a real fire arm in the living room.

If you are the gun owner in the family you could take it upon yourself to make sure the kids know the difference and train them in the real dangers of real fire arms.

As far as the distinctions between the real and the imaginary? If you do take them to the range, take the Nerf gun with you. Shoot the target with the nerff then hit te target with your handgun. Make sure the target is something like a milk jug filled with water. I think the demonstration will stick better than just talking to them.

JMO YMMV
 
Raildriver...I think that is a very good idea, to teach your child about real firearms and safety before they even have a "toy" gun in their hands. I feel much of the danger of children and firearms results from the opposite, children being familiar with the "toy" guns before handling real firearms, then handling real firearms negligently or carelessly as a result.

I don't have children, but If I did I think I would take the same approach, and teach my child safe handling of firearms before he has any "toy" guns so that he truly understands what the differences are...

Walt...I have a real firearm in my living room, and I feel it is quiet safe. I also shoot and learned on an "unapproved" shooting range, as I'm not sure how to get approval, and to whom I should get it from. I did however learn WHY I should shoot in a safe area, and WHAT constitutes a safe area. I do feel in your approach that firearms would take on a "taboo" quality for your children, and are getting too much credit for the danger involved. This approach will lead to a fascination with the "taboo" firearm. I feel more emphasis should be placed in the safety involved with handling said firearm. A gun sitting on a coffee table in your living room is just as safe as in your gunsafe, until someone picks it up and starts playing with it. I feel the imprinting idea is valid, but I believe you've got it backwards. I believe what the media is imprinting on most of our children about firearms is bad (guns are macho, bigger gun = more badass, shooting people is awesome). I believe that imprinting your children with the idea that firearms can be handled in safety in your own living room, as long as the rules are followed, is a better approach. Guns are not dangerous. The people handling them can be dangerous if uneducated, or motivated to do harm.

I do like the idea of demonstrating to children the potential of a real firearm. I remember vividly seeing the damage a 30.06 round does to a deer's head in person as it was killed while hunting with my father,...and at 6 years old it pretty much ended my fascination with real guns, made with metal and wood as "toys".

I feel that as a parent, a fair part of my firearm related discussions with my children would be in explaining and dispelling various myths about firearms that are foisted upon them by the media and public opinion.

I feel that safe handling of firearms should be a subject covered fairly young, in public schools. NOT "don't go near it, just leave and call and adult" as that mystifies and makes the gun "taboo". But the basics. Don't handle without an adult. Don't point at people. Always loaded. etc. Give children the tools they need to understand them and their uses. We expect our children to be educated about cars and driving before getting a drivers license, but there are no programs in place whatsoever to educate children properly about gun ownership before they turn 18 or 21, and frankly I think that is a mistake.
 
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walt629 said:
If you have to opportunity and your relatives allow it, take the kids down to the local range and teach them about guns. But make sure the ONLY time you are demonstrating anything about a REAL firearm you are doing it at an approved shooting range.

I read an article that stated the surroundings will imprint with the lesson. In other words if you show them your gun (real) in the family living room, that room is associated with the firearm and so the kids will think it's okay to have a real fire arm in the living room.
Click to expand...

I can't agree with the above. I carry a firearm every day. I use firearms every day (even if it's just plinking in the back yard). I could never bring myself to teach my child that it is NOT ok to have a firearm at home. Firearms are a part of our culture and history - Limiting that to an "approved shooting range" is just the beginning of a slippery slope that leads to the demonizing of firearms. Don't get me wrong, I understand the safety aspect, but if the 4 rules are followed at all times when handling firearms, the safety aspect of being at an "approved shooting range" isn't an issue.

The last thing I need is my children growing up thinking it's not perfectly acceptable to have firearms in the home, even in the livingroom. I want my children to be prepared for the world as it is, not as I hope it will be, and wish it would be.

walt629 said:
If you are the gun owner in the family you could take it upon yourself to make sure the kids know the difference and train them in the real dangers of real fire arms.

As far as the distinctions between the real and the imaginary? If you do take them to the range, take the Nerf gun with you. Shoot the target with the nerff then hit te target with your handgun. Make sure the target is something like a milk jug filled with water. I think the demonstration will stick better than just talking to them.

JMO YMMV
Click to expand...

This is a great idea, and one thing that I have done using his toy guns and my real ones - His toy guns go "click" and don't make a hole in the target - my real ones go "bang" and destroy the target. It's a very visual lesson that sticks quite well, especially when he gets sprayed by the water from the jugs. It's also quite fun for both of us.

*Edit to add: Thanks silicosys4 - That's the same reasoning I had when deciding how to handle the firearms education of my children.
 
I never had a problem knowing which was which growing up and many other kids don't. I definitely like Walt's idea. Good way to put the difference of the two in perspective for a kid.
 
It is critically important to teach each child how to differentiate between toy guns and real guns, and a lot of potentially effective ways have been discussed.

Each child is an individual, and as such he or she has a dominant learning style. Some children learn by seeing, others by hearing, and still others by doing. As a child, I heard a dozen or more people tell me that fire is hot, but until I read in a book why fire is hot, I was unpersuaded that fire is hot. My older brother skipped the book and asked, "Is fire hot?" He trusted the answer he got. My younger brother simply burned his finger--once.

As a parent, the key is to know which learning style is prevalent in each of your children, and to leverage that knowledge for each child.
 
beatledog7 said:
It is critically important to teach each child how to differentiate between toy guns and real guns, and a lot of potentially effective ways have been discussed.

Each child is an individual, and as such he or she has a dominant learning style. Some children learn by seeing, others by hearing, and still others by doing. As a child, I heard a dozen or more people tell me that fire is hot, but until I read in a book why fire is hot, I was unpersuaded that fire is hot. My older brother skipped the book and asked, "Is fire hot?" He trusted the answer he got. My younger brother simply burned his finger--once.

As a parent, the key is to know which learning style is prevalent in each of your children, and to leverage that knowledge for each child.
Click to expand...

How old were you when you read that?

Why is fire hot?
 
The following is a posting of mine on another subject/thread; I could easily have shot this boy dead in a second - and was "just that far away" from it. My recommendation with kids and toys guns is to draw the line when it is anything other than something that squirts water, and does not look anything like a real firearm....

------

During my service as an Air Force police patrolman I was asked to make a courtesy call at a base housing address one evening. After ringing the doorbell, looking up at windows and waiting for signs of someone coming to the door for a few seconds I became aware that there was someone a couple of yards away off in my peripheral vision with what appeared to be a rifle leveled at my head.

The houses were built into a steep hillside and this lad being a few feet up a sloping lawn looked larger than he was. He had evidently come from the back of the house and crept down along the wall. It took me a split second to shake off an initial paralysis and during another second of racing mental options I decided that if he was going to just shoot me he would have done it by that time. So I turned my head to look at him and it was clear then that he was just a boy.

I asked him to point his rifle somewhere else and he dropped the muzzle like a kid who had been told to get his feet off a chair. The rifle was a black 3/4 size Winchester lever action plastic toy. Initially indistinguishable from the real thing at night.

If he had not responded the way he did I really am not sure to this day what I would have done.
 
I played with many different toy guns and now play airsoft. I think that something like airsoft is the best way to teach someone target id, and anything else that goes with tactical situations. I have no problem with real firearm safety. Playing with toy guns is not only a good idea but essential to developing boys manhood.
 
I know it is children having fun, but i do not like it and discourage the practice.
 
I really doubt you'll get boys to stop being boys anyhow.

My friends and I kilt many an injun years ago and racked up a body count in the millions as i recall. Perfectly natural male juvenile role playing IMHO. Stopping that behaviour might cause problems though.
 
If you teach your kids that a Nerf gun is "like a real gun and shouldn't be pointed at anyone" they're going to think you're extreme at some point in their lives. Kids are NOT stupid people. They are YOUNG people. They will remember such things. I didn't teach my kids that Santa Claus was real either. Reality works. Fantasy, including PC fantasy, doesn't. The idea that a kid playing with a toy is the same as a reckless adult being reckless with a gun is absurd just to be blunt about it. That would be like telling them that crashing their toy car off the coffee table is going to cause them to do a Thelma And Louise off a cliff somewhere later in life. Most kids have a brain and they realize that guns are really dangerous. The problems come in when parents leave guns where kids can get at them "before" they are able to recognize them as really dangerous. Actually it's when parents leave guns and ammo together where kids can find them that are too young to be handling them. I let my kids handle my guns once in a while and made sure they knew that even an unloaded gun should never be pointed at anyone. But they had no idea where I kept the ammo and they couldn't have got to it if they tried. And I was with them every second they handled my real guns. You take the mystery out of things and kids are generally bored with it in a minute or two. But you put that magic hunk of shiny metal on a shelf just out of reach and tell your kids to never bother it and likely as not they'll try to get it the first chance they get. And if you left it loaded there could be a horrible problem coming. Let them play with a truly unloaded gun and they lose interest quickly.
 
I only tolerate nerf guns and stuff like that. AirSoft, Paintball, and other things that were designed to be shot at one another are fine. Maturity leads to them getting out of things like that (as toys) and into an actual interest in the firearms. This is when the rules come into play and should be taught, and enforced to become muscle memory.

Let kids be kids.
 
Toy guns are toys. They are meant to be fun. My stepson has a lot of nerf guns and those light strike guns (which are a lot of fun).

But with the BB gun, he knows to treat it like an actual firearm. He's very diligent about his 4 rules when it comes to his BB gun and his .22.
 
How old were you when you read that?

Why is fire hot?
Click to expand...

I was probably about 10. I didn't have burned off nubs by that time due to not believing fire was hot. I was using hyperbole to make a point...some children don't respond to "Don't do that!" They need to understand why they shouldn't do it and, in this case, why fire is hot.

Why fire is hot has to do with chemical reactions, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.
 
All three of my kids have nerf guns and we have quite the combat zone in our home as my wife and I also havethem. My teenage son, his friends and I all hhave airsoft guns, though I only allow my son the clear or fantasy guns. This has done wonders for my son and my target aquisition as my wife and daughters are "non combatants" and momma gets MAD when she gets hit with an errant airsoft round.

All three of the kids also have a .22 rifle and enjoy shooting at the range with me. Safely of course.
 
Someone around here got thrown in the klink for a hate crime after pointing his finger and dropping his thumb at some gal while he was driving by.

I think kids can't even do that at school as play these days.
 
beatledog7 said:
I was probably about 10. I didn't have burned off nubs by that time due to not believing fire was hot. I was using hyperbole to make a point...some children don't respond to "Don't do that!" They need to understand why they shouldn't do it and, in this case, why fire is hot.

Why fire is hot has to do with chemical reactions, but that's beyond the scope of this thread.
Click to expand...

Sorry. Thought there was some seriousness there.

Certaindeaf said:
Someone around here got thrown in the klink for a hate crime after pointing his finger and dropping his thumb at some gal while he was driving by.
Click to expand...

I'm thinking the totality of circumstances didn't make it into your post
 
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