Guns for Tots

Doesn't look like your post to topic "took".

I'll rebump it here...

When toy guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have toy guns.
This is so nuts....bump.

Weird. I thought it might have been lag. I guess not.

"The bill, sponsored by city council members David Welprin (D-Queens) and Albert Vann (D-Brooklyn), would make it illegal to own or sell any toy that could "reasonably be perceived to be an actual firearm."

It has finally happened. New York liberals have crossed over into never never land where the Constitution becomes a faded and distant memory. Dear God! What is wrong with these people and why are they allowed to reproduce????

Some newbie who couldn't figure out how to read the bump lists decided to sign up under username "bang_list."

It would be nice if his name were discontinued, and forced to pick something that does not inconvenience hundreds of others.

I'd be happy to advise him how to read the bang list.

That account has been deleted. Thanks.

Lets here it for Libertarians!

LINK

Boy statue drops squirt gun as sculptor bows to times

Santa Fe sculptor Linda Strong's fountain, featuring bronze figures of her children in a water fight, has decorated a city park for 21 years. She plans to replace the boy's water pistol with a hose

August 3, 2000

Web posted at: 9:05 a.m. EDT (1305 GMT)

SANTA FE, New Mexico (AP) -- The boy and girl, slightly crouched, take aim at one another. She has a hose. He brandishes a water pistol.

For Linda Strong, it was an image that captured all the joy of being young.

When the sculptor was asked to create a fountain for a city park, it was a natural: Using her children as models, she caught in bronze their many water fights.

That was 21 years ago. Today -- to some observers who have watched gun violence escalate and children bleeding on school yards -- the piece evokes something more sinister.

So Strong is about to alter her sculpture in this art-savvy city. She plans to chisel off the boy's hand Thursday and give him a new one, holding a garden hose rather than a gun.

"I think it's the right thing to do," she said.

Last year, following the deaths of 14 students and a teacher at Columbine High School in Colorado, there were letters to a local newspaper and calls to City Hall objecting to the fountain.

"At first I didn't consider doing anything about it," said Strong, sitting in her studio south of Santa Fe. "I just went, 'Oh, listen to these people."'

Responsibility of public art

But then her fountain was vandalized. The boy was smeared with green paint, and someone wrote "no gun" on his legs. The artist became intent on protecting her work.

"And so I capitulated. I thought, the times have changed," she said. "I am open-minded enough to change with the times."

Strong went to the city, and the Santa Fe Arts Commission recommended the change.

"I don't like revisionism in art, but I think art in public places has another responsibility," said commission chairwoman Letitia Frank.

Strong, 58, is the first to admit that when no water is running through the fountain -- frequently, during this summer's drought -- the boy's pistol doesn't look like a squirt gun.

"I want people to look at it and enjoy it. It's not being enjoyed," she said.

Concerns from the start

Not everyone agrees with the revision.

"I don't think there's anything wrong with it," said Diana Beilman, 15, glancing over at the sculpture from a nearby skateboard park. "Little boys hold guns all the time."

A gift to the city from Strong's late mother, the fountain was dedicated in October 1979, the International Year of the Child.

There were objections even then. In a yellowed letter-to-the-editor in one of Strong's scrapbooks, Charlene Neel refers to a recent shooting over a traffic dispute, and writes that there is "quite enough (violence) on television and on the streets of Santa Fe."

The writer -- now Charlene Neel Dye of Oxford, Mississippi -- recalls that at the time, she wouldn't allow her young son to play with guns or war toys.

When she saw the fountain, "I was shocked. The little boy was in such an aggressive stance, and he had a gun." She remembers other friends sharing her concern.

Too politically correct?

But Jack Samson, who moved to Santa Fe in 1930, blames "self-appointed guardians of our morality" for the planned alteration.

"It is an effort to be politically correct, and I think it goes over the bounds of common sense," said Samson, a former editor of Field & Stream.

The estimated cost of the alteration is about $1,700.

"If you look at public sentiment now in terms of guns and youth, even though it's a squirt gun, most people in favor of (altering) it feel that ... the message it's providing in its imagery, is not appropriate in this day and age," said city spokesman Juan Rios.

Locals enjoying the park on a summer afternoon appeared to agree.

"If the artist and her family are willing to change it, and it will calm people, why not? We need more calm," Kerry Featheringill said.

Some people are really stupid.