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Feb
03
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One of my favourite things to play with when I used to be a kid was my cowboy outfit. It consisted of a cowboy hat, suede waistcoat and a six-shooter in a holster. I used to practice my fast draw before the mirror, obsessed as I was by the westerns on telly and films. When I grew older, I developed a taste for pacifism and I turned against toy guns. My man and I both agreed to raise our children without recourse to toy pistols, rifles or machine guns and so on.
I find it depressing as I am going round toy departments, to see toy grenades, fire throwers and all manner of armaments. Our children failed to have toy guns of any type and we told our loved ones not to buy them as presents. Other people , who had given their children toy guns, took it as a private feedback and were offended.
For us, it was simply a private call about how we would have liked to raise our children. We wanted our kids to reach adulthood in an environment of love and toleration.
We did not want influences like toy guns to meddle with that. I see it as a confusing contradiction when you tell your youngsters not to battle in the playground because fighting is inaccurate, and then you inspire them to pretend to spray their mates with machine gun fire.
It’s only pretend, say our objectors, but I suspect it’s giving violence a seal of approval. After playing a game of slaughtering folks all day with toy guns or games, they lose empathy for the genuine thing. It’s cool to join a gang and act out fantasies in reality. Kids should be shown the consequences of violence. I do not mean we should reveal them to scare horror scenes, but they must notice that people who are shot and stabbed don’t simply stand up and walk away. We must stop violence being romanticized. There’s nothing pretty about being shot and there’s nothing fantastic about war. I believe everybody should throw the toy guns away and take the kids round a vet’s hospice to see the effects of firing a trigger. One other thing.