No guns will ever be allowed in our house. If he gets toy guns, they will be in the trash immediately. If they are from his family, I will throw them away in front of them.
I'm anti-gun to begin with (I don't care if you have one, it doesn't belong near children, especially mine---I'm looking at you now dead Soccer gun toting mom. She was from my hometown and made news about "needing her guns" at her 6 year old's soccer game.) don't bring your gun near me or the kids.
So no, Kalvin will never have a water pistol.
I did see pictures of my 3.5 year old nephew with several toy guns pointing them at other kids and got twitchy.
Post by livinreality on Aug 8, 2013 12:37:51 GMT -5
DS1 is 3.5 and he just got a water gun a couple weeks ago as a reward (of his choice). I am ok with water guns and bubble guns at this age, when he gets older nerf guns are fine but no realistic guns. DH and I will probably argue of this but I don't see the need for a realistic gun.
At other people's houses DS1 is allowed to play with clearly toy guns (water, bubble, nerf and one kid has a laser tag gun) but is not to play with real looking guns, he knows that he will no longer be allowed to play with the kid, he is to say he is not allowed and pick another game.
The only issue has been at the playground when some strange kid was toting a play gun and he would not leave DS1 alone, and I had to intervene and tell him to go away the kid said he did not want to play guns.
We'll do water guns for the pool and nerf guns. I don't mind the brightly colored ones that are clearly a toy. Also, my H has also been saving his Red Rider for Lincoln when he's much older.
No toy guns, no pretending things are guns, no pretending to shoot things, no using fingers as guns, no water guns. I am pretty adamant about this.
And certainly no real guns.
This. We feel really strongly about this.
Interesting fact: my husband works in the video game industry. He, and all but one member of his executive team all have the same rule in their homes. no gun play allowed, ever. I find this amusing and so ironic.
hmm. Its so hard to analyze this because growing up it was never an issue but also in Ireland nobody has real guns in their home (except criminals and possibly special forces?. regular police are not armed with guns) So there was never any "confusion" or whatever. I assume we played with guns or at least my brothers and we all had water guns and the like.
So I guess I just don't know. I don't want them playing with real looking toy guns, just don't "Get" it... why make them.. confusing. But toy guns/water guns? I don't know, I don't want it to be this weird thing where they are freaked out by my "overreaction" to all things gun-esque. I don't want it to become a big "thing".
So I'm thinking we'll fall somewhere in the middle.
I am very afraid of guns, maybe is one of the things that bothers me most about living in the US is how everyone is so gung-ho about guns? like you can just have a gun, you can carry it with you and such? Seems so bizarre to me, coming from a very no-gun culture.